fightin' against time
by Omeganixtra
Summary: Messing around with that Vex teleporter turns out to be more hazardous than Cayde had planned, because ending up in the ass-end of nowhere on the Tangled Shore was not supposed to happen. Like, at all. Seriously, it wasn't. [crossposted on AO3]
1. Chapter 1

"What… are you doing?"

She's here again.

His Hunter. His darling little protégé who singlehandedly saved them all from Ghaul and his Red Legion goonies. His own personal ticket to never-ending bragging rights against Zavala and Ikora.

She's here again, watching him poke around where he probably shouldn't poke and looking halfway tempted to just have her Ghost contact Ikora or Zavala, and ask them to come and stop him.

"Cayde?"

He looks up, silly grin on his face and gives her a thumb's up. "'ey there, Guardian! What's up?"

"What's u—Cayde! You're the one who asked me to get here!"

"Did I? Huh… musta forgotten, my bad."

"There's Vex technology everywhere, Cayde… should I be concerned?"

"What? Concerned? Nah, never you mind this, young padawan, this is only a… let's call it a philosophical interest in the minds of the Vex, nothing more."

"Cayde, philosophical means that you're thinking about the differences, not tinkering with something that neither of us barely understand!" her Ghost notes and whirls in the air. It really is amazing how humane he sounds sometimes.

"Eh, semantics." Cayde waves a hand in their general direction before frowning. He raises a hammer and cracks it down, hard, on the machinery in front of him, ignoring the squawk that registers in his auditory units a few seconds after. "It's the thought that counts, right? I know I'm right."

"Cayde, this isn't safe!"

"Cool your jets, I've got this. Cross my heart and hope to—"

A burst of sparks and whirring noises interrupts him and his hands are up instantly to shield his face. The noise grows louder as the linear streaks of light that usually signal a flux of incoming enemies appears and Cayde feels panic begin to kick his systems into action.

There's just one little thing that he hasn't registered yet.

It's just too late.

"Cayde!"

The whatever-it-was is linking itself to him, synchronizing with his internal systems in a way that he's never seen or heard of before, and all Cayde can feel is the sense that something is wrong and it's inside him and by all things holy and unholy it's inside of him and he can't get it out get it out getitoutGETITOUT!

"Uh," is his intelligent answer as he leans backwards. His Ghost is screaming inside his head through their private channel as she valiantly tries to desynchronize him from the machinery, but it's connecting to him faster than she can decode it all. "This was not part of the plan!"

"Cayde, wha—!"

The Guardian is panicking now, shit that's not good. Uhhhh, think fast, Cayde, think fast!

"Get Ikora!" he screeches as the light between them is growing too bright for him to see anything, normal or infrared vision doesn't matter. "I said, get Ikora—fuck's sake, step on it, Guardian!"

A boom has him dazed and he feels that distinct weird feeling that always follows whenever he's used Vex teleports or Fallen transmats in the past—a central tugging somewhere in his stomach and the phantom sensation of wanting to puke up everything his stomach's holding at that very moment.

Nothing ever does though, Exo perk!

But then there's silence and Cayde is staring up at a dark, unfamiliar ceiling.

"Fuck…" he groans, limbs scrambling as he's trying to get his bearings. "This was not part of the plan."

oOo

In hindsight, messing around with the weird, uncatalogued Vex tech that the Guardian had scrounged up might not have been his brightestmoment ever, but if there's one thing Cayde has learned over the years is that nothing ventured, nothing gained. Alright, so there had been a few technical issues back when Nessus had been a thing, but the Guardian got him out, and the teleporter had been useful when they had taken back the City from the Cabal, so really, there was nothing to worry about and—oh he's really fucked up this time, though, hasn't he?

He has no idea where he is right now.

"Ah shit," he sighs. Scratching at his horn only holds his attention for so long as he tries to get a good look at wherever he even is.

There's not much to identify his location. Not even infrared shows anything, other than a quickly fading warmth-signature not too far away from where he's currently standing.

There's torn banners and empty ether-cannisters thrown haphazardly on the floor, piled together in lumps as if some grade A-hoarder had come through a Fallen-camp.

Fuck.

He's in a Fallen camp, isn't he?

Sundance bursts into existence without a sound and Cayde lets out a following screech through his vocal units for all of two seconds before he has enough sense to cut the sound immediately. New ground doesn't necessarily mean 'safe ground', and until he knows where in the Void he is, it would probably be a lot better if his Ghost didn't scare him shitless without a very good reason.

"Ain't safe, 'Dance," he says and pokes at her red and golden shell with a finger. "Stay outta sight, would ya?"

She disappears in another little burst of light without a word, only maintains the connection to his mind.

In the distance his audio units are picking up gunshots. Repeated gunshots.

He reaches out with the connection he has to the Light, then scrambles—actually scrambles what in the Hells?!—and just… stops.

He feels a Light out there somewhere in this shithole of a Fallen-nest, but it's… strained, for lack of a better word. Cayde's been around for a long time, has truly seen some serious shit throughout all six of his reboots, but what practically assaults his senses here nearly floors him.

This is just… just wrong! Darkness and Light is mingled, which would suggest that whoever was out there was an Awoken Guardian, but the Light isn't moving in the right way for that to be the case. It's not an Exo either, because those suckers are a whole other ballgame of weird mechanics and Light and a fuckton of engineering crap that Cayde zoned out of ages before Ikora and Amanda even tried to explain to him how it worked.

Which leaves… human.

A human Guardian who's apparently adopted a streak of Darkness and tried to get it to play nice with the other kids.

And Zavala's always saying that Cayde is hazardous to leave to his own devices?

Pfah, blasphemy is what Cayde can safely say to that.

Still, a Light is a Light, and seeing as he's the Hunter Vanguard so the li'l sucker has to do what he says. Or at least point him to the nearest jumpship so he can get back to the Tower and hopefully avoid a tirade ala Zavala on how he's shirking his responsibilities. At least he hopes so.

"Still need to figure out where we are, Cayde," Sundance reminds him through their shared connection and Cayde nods, albeit hesitantly.

Nothing about this place says 'safe' to him, no matter how he twists or turns it, but he still strolls forward, intent on at least trying to live up to his—very legendary and amazingly stellar, thank you very much, Ikora—reputation as a Hunter before the Tower was thrown at him.

Cayde follows the connection to the Light he felt earlier, but only looks around him in disbelief when he enters another room in the complex that he's lost in.

It looks as if a bomb went off, corpses of Fallen littering the ground for as far as he can see with varying degrees of damage. Some have their heads blown off, others are so riddled with bullet holes that the only thing holding the corpses together are the different pieces of armor that the Fallen wear. His boots collide with scrap metal and Cayde looks down to see the cracked, still-smoking lens of a Servitor staring blankly back at him.

"Howdy there, fella," he winces, reaches down to pat the lens. Whatever happened to pass through here recently was pissed, and if Cayde is being perfectly honest, he'd actually rather not stick around to meet whoever, or whatever it is. "No happy ending, huh?"

This mystery destructive person gives off that they are not to be messed with, or else suffer the consequences.

The smell in here is absolutely revolting, and the small crack in a nearby, singed-to-Hell-and-back wall that reveals pale purple right and white sand does nothing to ventilate the shithole.

So, the Reef.

A quick check with infrared vision only reveals what his eyes has already shown, but it never hurts to be on the safer side, especially not when visiting the Tangled Shore.

Cayde'd know the stench of this Fallen cesspit anywhere. That, and the fact that there's only one place in the Reef where this many Fallen could gather without Earth, Awoken or Cabal noticing.

A scream of rage echoes not far from where he's standing and Cayde tenses. The Light he felt earlier is simmering. Can't be good. He draws his gun in one hand, readies a throwing knife in the other, and slowly begins to sneak closer, hides behind the nearest large, wide object he can find and peeks around the corner, Ace of Spades held close to his chest.

The sight that meets him has him shell shocked.

The Guardian, his Guardian, stands covered in Fallen blood from top to toe, a hole in her mask allowing him to see the utter fury and despair that simmers in her eye. She raises a gun, a hand cannon if he's not mistaken, and points it directly at the head of a Fallen sitting on its knees before her.

It's a mock of an execution if Cayde's ever seen one.

He says nothing, but he still can't help but check on Sundance and breathes a sigh of relief when he feels her tucked away in her own little pocket of space, her Light a warm, pulsing gentleness that soothes his rattled nerves.

"Uldren. Where is he?"

Holy Hell, even her voice is utterly terrifying, that is the first thing that runs through his mind. The second is to ponder what Uldren Sov has to do with anything. Last he checked, the Awoken princeling was locked up rather tight in the Prison of Elders.

Maybe Petra knows what's going on, he'll have to comm her later.

A curse (and a rather foul one at that, if Cayde's Eliksni is up to date) is spat at her. The Guardian only stares down at the Fallen, doesn't say another word, before she presses the gun to her enemy's head and pulls the trigger.

The following bang echoes off the walls. Blood sprays out from behind the Fallen in a wide circle, paints the already sopping ground an even grittier color.

The Guardian walks past the now-collapsed Fallen corpse, kicks a severed arm rather violently out of her way, too.

Ouch, is all that he can think as he's watching her.

Her Ghost is hovering close by. She reaches up and wraps her hand around it, brings it down to her chest and shields it from view.

Their voices are getting muffled and more difficult to understand from where Cayde is hunkered down behind what appears to be a supply-crate.

"Guardian, you need to—"

"No."

Her voice feels like ice.

"You can't keep on doing—"

"The Mindbender still needs locating," she spits out—and Cayde just about really shits himself this time because Holy Hell, what is she doing anywhere near that fucker of all possible adversaries?! Okay Cayde, no panicking, just figure out what's going on, it won't be hard, just stroll up to her, crack a smile an' a joke and we'll be good to go, yes siree!—interrupts her Ghost as she kneels beside one of the Fallen Captains she's apparently just killed off, throws bits and pieces of its armor behind her for a few moments before she holds up something that Cayde can't identify from where he's hiding. "Use the coordinates that Spider gave us from last we visited."

"But Guardian, I—"

"Get to it."

He is too caught up in watching that twisted creature in front of him speak with his Guardian's voice and move like his Guardian does, that he doesn't see the grenade still clutched in a dead Vandal's hand. His foot catches against it, sends the armed ball flying through the air until it collides, quite noisily, with one of the supply crates scattered around the room. It detonates on impact and it's all he can do to throw his ass down to avoid the explosion.

Smoke and fire fill the area. It blows into his face and for a moment he almost feels like he's choking, but Cayde switches almost immediately from normal vision to infrared instead, trying to get a sense of what is around him.

"Whew… that, that's one way to blow your cover, Cayde," he mutters and starts to turn around, surveils the damage and lets out a low whistle. "Good job."

He only manages to turn around once before a throwing knife is buried in his shoulder and catches him off-guard—later on he'll deny that it happened like that, and instead explain how it was all part of a plan. He collides with the ground, bangs the back of his head against a sharp piece of shrapnel and feels the metal scratch against his head-casing. No doubt he'll have to spend who knows how long on getting that polished off or repaired if he gets back.

No. No, not 'if'. When. When he gets back. Holliday'll probably do it if he asks her real nice about it, almost certainly do it if he throws in some sweet tech too.

All of his musings come to an abrupt halt when a foot is planted right on top of his chest plate and forces him down flat against the ground. The jostle has him go back to normal vision almost automatically. It also makes the knife sticking out of his shoulder hurt like a bitch. OW!

The mouth of a gun enters his vision, still smoking from the killing spree it no doubt committed not long ago, and soon after, the face of his Guardian.

She looks like a warrior goddess out of those old stories from way, way before the Collapse, strands hair dancing around the visible parts of her face, some sticking due to the sweat. Her skin is painted with dirt and blood and rage but all Cayde can think is how and why and what happened to you as he stares up at her. Well, that and also question what happened for her mask to look like something chewed it up, regurgitated the remains, chewed some more and then spit it out like yesterday's trash.

The frenzy in her eyes dies almost the moment that she gets a good look at him. The silence is almost deafening in the aftermath of the explosion. Slowly the grip around her gun slackens and it collides with his chest, making Cayde let out a displeased yelp.

"C-Cayde?" Her voice is breathy, confused, almost like she doesn't even believe her own eyes.

"Hey there, Guardian, you're lookin' rather… bloodthirsty."

Someplace, somewhere Karma is laughing at the both of them.

oOo

It all goes downhill from there.

Cayde still orders his Sundance to stay out of sight until he explicitly tells her to come out through their private conection. It's just in case he explains and she reluctantly complies but doesn't sound too happy. Manifestation makes a revival take longer—she hates that, he knows and asks it all the same.

Better to be safe than sorry.

Above him the Guardian lets go and scrambles back, blabbering to herself as if she's cracked her mind on something sharp and has no idea how to fix this.

It looks bad. It looks really fucking bad as in the sort of bad that he'd need Ikora's brain and Zavala's cool to handle. Probably some of those, ahem, meds that he'd slipped Andal whenever something had hurt too much on the top floor for alcohol to take care of it, too.

Fuck me.

Cayde dares to meet her eyes and immediately wishes that he hasn't. She looks raw and stretched out. He needs to make sense of this shit before she jumps him again with a knife—oh yeah, that's still stuck in his shoulder, isn't it? So that's why it hurts like a bitch—and so he sits up, her Hunter knife still sticking out of his shoulder and tries to channel his most serious Hunter Vanguard expression.

"What happened?"

He can't tell if it's working but it shuts her up, though. She blinks at him, eyes all wide and confused as she apparently tries to make sense of his question.

The silence stretches too long for him to be comfortable. He's gotta try again.

"Kid, I ain't no mindreader, you gotta use your words here."

Something flickers in her eyes, something harsh and brutal and vulnerable at the same time. He has no idea how to deal with this. Emotions are not his thing when it comes to comforting others, at most his go-to fix-all is a strong bottle of whatever hydrazine-addled goop he can scrounge up for Exos, and some strong-ass shit up there in the double digits for the fleshy ones and—

"How are you here?"

He cringes at her question, mentally freaks because holy hell—who hurt her and when can he leave to kill whoever it is?—she's sounding like she never thought to see him again.

She was just in the Tower with him, that much time can't have passed.

At least he hopes that's the case.

"Yeah, well… you see…"

She interrupts him by stumbling to her feet and beginning to pace back and forth.

"No, what am I saying? This is a dream, yeah, this can only be some fucked up nightmare that fucker of a Fallen piece of shit has conjured up—oh, I am going to enjoy killing him!" she's screaming by the end of her tirade and for a moment he's afraid that she's forgotten him sitting right there in front of her and watching her apparently about to lose her marbles.

"You're not real," she says, resolutely, and stops her pacing in front of him. "You can't be. Not any more."

"Last time I checked I seemed pretty real," he says dryly right back at her. Her answering laughter has him frowning. "Hey!"

She's fumbling with her helmet now, the laughter interrupted by what sounds suspiciously like sobs, but she finally wrestles it off and throws it somewhere behind her. There's tracks of tears down her cheeks now and Cayde is screaming inside.

Her Ghost visibly cringes at the racket it makes when helmet collides with the debris and body parts that litter the ground. Cayde just stares. He's done a lot of that, it seems and it probably won't be the last time he's doing it right now.

She's a wreck to behold. A wonderous, crazy wreck that's he's honestly surprised is still standing.

"What happened to you?" he asks and now he's deadly quiet. Something's wrong here, deadly wrong because even he can get a sense of the atmosphere here and it ain't good.

She's looking straight at him as if she's not sure if she should laugh or cry. Oh, what he wouldn't give to pass all of this up as a joke, but he can't. As much as he wants to skip out on it, right now he needs to be the Vanguard, not the Hunter.

Fuck me sideways

"Mirage-you really wants to know? Shouldn't you already know everything since you're just a figment of my fucked up imagination?"

Still staring at him like he's some fucked up dream, the Guardian steps closer and kneels before him. This close to her he can see the bags under her eyes, the sickly gray tint of her skin that the Reef gives every human who spends some manner of prolonged time here. She's scared of him, of what he represents as if it's making her question the reality that she's finding herself in.

"Guardian, it's him."

Her eyes snap to the side and locks on to her Ghost at the same time as Cayde's.

"That's not possible."

"I'm not disputing that. All I'm saying is that what you're seeing right there is something I'm seeing too."

"Your circuits are fried," she says and all Cayde can think is that she's up to her neck in denial. "The radiation is getting to you!"

"I am in great condition, thank you very much!" her Ghost quips and floats closer, scanning Cayde. "And I'm telling you that this is him, it's Cayde!"

"It's not possible!" she is screaming again now, and up she goes again, ignoring Cayde's protest when she pushes away from him. "I was there, you were there! You were the one who said that there was nothing we could do, and now you're telling me that he's right here with us? Don't you fucking dare do this to me, Ghost!"

"Hey!" Cayde snaps at her and stumbles onto his own feet. "Listen, I don't know what the hell happened between the two of you to start yappin' at each other like this, but this," he gestures to himself, "ain't no hallucination! I feel quite real and even if I mess around with Vex tech that I really shouldn't touch doesn't mean tha—hey! Quit it, don't you start laughing at me!"

The Ghost is dissolving into laughter now, so there's that at least. His Guardian is staring between him and her Ghost like she's not completely sure what to do with the two of them.

She's looking lost. He's tempted to reach out and just hug her until she can't breathe anymore. She really looks like she needs it, if he's being totally honest.

"It really is you…" she rasps out. "Traveler's Light, it's you, Cayde!"

Aaaaaaaand, there it goes. Wanting to reach out and hug her is replaced with bruised dignity and a dramatic gasp.

"'Course it's me!" he says, dignity just a little bruised (yep, just a teeny, tiny bit) over the fact that it's taken her so long to actually get it. "You'd think I was dead with the way you reacted."

The sudden silence that follows is booming.

"Wha—was it somethin' I said?"

oOo

He's staring.

He's staring and it's impolite but honestly, Cayde is completely out of fucks to give at this point and instead just focusses completely on the Guardian because he has to have heard wrong, there's just no way – no fucking way – that he's keeled over. He's right here, for Traveler's sake!

"You died. Permanently."

"Yeah, pull the other one."

But she's not making any jokes on his expense right now, no one would look that crushed if one of their close friends dying was nothing but a joke to them.

Huh.

"You're not joking."

Utter fury flashes through her eyes at his words.

"I watched you die in front of me, and you really think I'd be callous enough to joke about it?" she hisses, and Cayde is just about ready to beat himself over the head because that… that was just, wow.

He really ain't no good with feelings. Urgh.

Her emotions are all over the place, he can see it plain as day and feel it ricochet all over the connection to the Traveler's Light that they both have access to. Makes him want to grab her and hold her down, as if that would be enough to center her. It feels like claws, fury and despair is making the connection slick and oily, almost sick but as soon as he grasps what she's feeling it changes again, but this time it is wonder.

Wonder and hope and love—wait what?

"You're… y-you are… oh Traveler, Cayde, you're alive!"

Tears and shouting would be something he could have expected. Her falling on her knees and hugging him, not so much.

He's completely still when she abandons all thoughts of decorum and goes straight for him, wrapping her arms around him like they haven't seen each other for years, and the weird thing actually is that for all he knows it might as well have been years since that prince-ling offed him. He makes a sidenote to his Ghost of looking into the date. Later, though. Much later because right now he's sitting in the ass-end of nowhere in the middle of the Tangled Shore, knee-deep is Fallen guts and an emotionally compromised Hunter Guardian who won't stop hugging him.

Still, if he's dead now—and whoa, ain't that a surprise that tops over any of the things he'd ever expect to happen—there has to have been some loose ends, oh, which reminds him—!

"I have one question now that we're here and I've got your attention… what happened to Colonel?"

He squawks when her hand connects with face. He deserves it, though.


	2. Chapter 2

It hasn't been years, he discovers, since he died.

It's only been three months.

Three months where all the Guardian has been thinking about is sweet, sweet revenge and carnage and payback. That's she's still going strong without stopping is a wonder in and off itself, because for all his knowledge of Guardians and the shit they can deal with as Light-augmented undead beings, barely stopping for a rest over the course of three months are sure to hit at least some form of limit that she can't break.

Although that hasn't happened yet. 'Yet' being the operative keyword here, he's sure of it.

Cayde is finding it all ridiculously surreal.

"We aren't safe out here."

Her reasoning is sound but since there's this teeny, tiny thing with him apparently being dead and all, Cayde ain't all that happy to waltz out of wherever the fuck they're at right now. The Tangled Shore is a haven to outlaws and the general scum of the system for a reason after all, and him parading 'round the block when the Scorned Barons are out and about sounds… not so fun. Not so fun at all.

"Don't want to burst your bubble there, sweetheart," he drawls and yanks out the knife embedded in his shoulder. He hands it over with a flourish that has her stare at his hands for a full ten seconds before she reacts, "but 'safe' went flying out beyond the Kuiper belt somewhere around the time where you landed here."

"I know."

The scary thing that's most certainly going to keep him up at night for the foreseeable future is that she's not lying.

She really does know. Or at least he's desperately hoping that she does.

"Come on, this way," is all she says before wrapping a hand around his gauntlet and hauling him up on his feet, immediately heading for the sparrow that's parked not far away. "I'll get us somewhere safe."

"Uh…"

She chuckles, a bitter, stinging sound that would have him wincing if he wasn't trying to keep her from exploding like a rigged grenade.

"Well, as safe as anywhere in this shithole can get," she comments and looks at him. "Petra had it set up by the time I got here."

"PV's here?"

She's nodding while her Ghost draws closer to the two of them. Sundance is still snug in her own little dimension and Cayde sure as fucking Hell ain't gonna bring her out until there's at least several thick inches of steel between them and the rest of the world. He watches as a large piece of pink… something is transmatted into the Guardian's hands and raises a brow.

Hell no.

By the Speaker's frilly boxer briefs, Hell fucking no!

"I'm not wearing that."

"You most certainly are if you want to go outside," she says tersely enough that for a moment it's like seeing Zavala glare at him.

Zavala's not nearly as cute as the Guardian is, though.

The cloak however is an absolute eyesore with its bright magenta-pink color and it's absolutely going to clash horribly with his already-fabulous getup.

"Pink is so not my color."

"You can throw it away for all I care when we're out of the open."

"This is going to clash horribly with my color scheme, you absolute fiend. I hate you for making me wear this."

"No he doesn't," Sundance quips and for a moment there, Cayde's as tense as a Fallen going on an ether hunger strike, but she doesn't materialize. She's only tapped into the Guardian's Ghost's and he can breathe easy once more, "He's being a drama queen."

"Sundance!"

If a Ghost could smile and jump around in utter joy, this would be what they'd look like, Cayde decides, because never in his years as a Hunter has he ever seen a Ghost spin around like it's flat out drunk and chirp like that.

It's adorable.

He catches it out of the corner of his eye, but the Guardian tenses when she hears his little buddy. Guess there's some stuff he still needs to wheedle out of her, but that's not now when both of them might as well have a big, fat target painted on their backs. Later, preferably with a stiff drink or two to loosen up the joints—kid might still have some of the good stuff from Amanda's storage stashed away somewhere, he knew that he'd left a cache or two onboard her ship not long after the Red Legion had been kicked out of the City.

Nonetheless he shucks out of Andal's cape and carefully folds it before taking that hideous thing masquerading as a Hunter Cloak—of course not before he's looked it over with the proper amount of disdain that such a wretched creation deserves—and fastening it beneath his scarf. The Guardian is silent the entire time, eyes flickering back to him every few seconds when she's probably sure that he ain't looking at her. She freezes whenever she figures out that she's caught by him and her eyes are straight ahead once more.

Still adorable

As soon as he's finished tangling with the monstrosity, she's fishing out a small comm with one hand, the other having returned around his lower arm. Her fingers are curling around his wrist and he shuffles a bit until she lets go of him. He only laces their fingers together in return and cracks a smile at her.

"Petra," the Guardian is speaking quietly into the comm while keeping a close eye on Cayde, her Ghost and their surroundings. Nothing appears to escape her notice as they're slowly beginning to make their way to wherever it is that this so-called 'safe place' is hidden away at.

PV's apparent answer has the Guardian scowl, but she doesn't slow down in her herding.

"I don't care if you've run out of fuel for your jumpship and you're trapped on the fucking Dreadnought. Get to the Lair, there's something you have to see." She's looking only at him now, eyes gleaming in the sickly light that the Shore's illuminated with. "Trust me," she says. "It's something you'd have to see to believe."

Petra's answer is apparently less than satisfying if the Guardian's scowl is anything to go by.

Cayde can't help but crack a smile before he's stepping closer, ignores the way that the Guardian is tensing up, and wrangles the comm out of her hands. The shit-eating grin he's wearing only stretches further as he waggles his eyebrows. "And here I thought you cared, PV. Shows what I know 'bout our supposed friendship, huh?"

There's silence on the other end, the Guardian is staring at him like she's not completely sure if she should deck him or just yank him down and kiss him silly. Frankly, he's a fan of the latter. He can still feel the ringing from when she hit him earlier.

Then the comm explodes in what he can only describe as 'frothing Awoken screaming'.

He daintily hands over the comm once more to his Guardian and leans back against the wall as a cackle escapes him. The Guardian is looking at him with a hesitant smile peeking out from the corner of her mouth, and that adorable dimple she has in her left cheek is peeking out at him.

Score one for Cayde-6!

He better keep that one to himself, though.

oOo

Apparently, what constitutes as 'safe' in the Guardian's eyes is the safehouse of the one and only Spider of the Tangled Shore.

Honestly, at this point Cayde really ought to stop being surprised anymore—it's no good for his health.

The fact that there's Fallen all around him, glaring at him with their creepy beady eyes and clenching at their spears and guns like they'd like nothing more than to put some holes in him that Sundance can't fix again is nothing short of eerie. He's just counting his lucky stars that the Guardian's with him.

She is being avoided like the plague by the little fuckers, as if they're more than aware of what she's done so far and what she's planning for the future.

The sickly feel of her Light covers her from head to toe as she's striding straight into the maw of this dragon's lair. It's oily and unnatural and apparently a wonderful Fallen-repellant.

Huh, who knew?

Doesn't make the nausea go away, though

If Spider's confused when she shows up with him in tow, he sure doesn't show it. The Fallen is looking down at the two of them, playing with an empty Ghost shell in one hand and looking very much like he's half a deal short of asking all sorts of—no doubt—invasive, incredibly convoluted questions.

Cayde's just beginning to feel the stress of the day.

"Well, in all my years I never thought I'd see the day where a Guardian managed to resurrect one of their own who'd met their Final Death," Spider's still talking—why is that overgrown gnat still talking, can they just please get out of here, it smells and it's weird and he wants to go home—but the Guardian doesn't exactly seem inclined to give the bastard any answers without a fight.

"How he's here is none of your business, Spider. The only reason I'm bothering you about this right now is to let you know that there will be a second Guardian in the complex, nothing else."

"How… magnanimous of you, my dear," Spider's cackling is grating on Cayde's auditory sensors and his body tenses from the way that he's being looked over as if he's nothing more than a piece of meat. "But what about your little revenge quest now, dear Guardian? Giving up on hunting down Uldren and his Scorned Barons?"

Spider mentioning the Barons makes it feel like the hives have broken out and all of a sudden Exos are no longer immune to the fucking thing. That the Guardian has been going toe to toe with these crazy bastards is a can of worms he'd really rather not think about right now when he's still reeling from trying to understand everything that's happened so far.

They'll talk about this later.

"Not on your life," she hisses and for a moment Cayde is choking because the Darkness around her just swelled up as if it's choking her. "That bastard has to pay for what he did, nothing will ever change that. Not even Cayde being here."

"And Cayde can hear you perfectly well since he's standing right here beside you," he can't help but say. It turns their attention straight at him. "Just, y'know, wanted to say something—I'm feeling quite lonesome all by myself over here, Guardian."

The Darkness crawls back from wherever it came from. He's writing that down as another win.

The roaring laughter that erupts from Spider is something he hasn't taken into account. The Fallen smuggler-crime lord-whatever-the-Hell-he's-playing-at-now is clutching his belly as he just keeps on laughing. The Fallen guards beside Spider are chittering nervously as they glance between him and their boss. In their situation Cayde would probably have done the same because Traveler above, that laughter must have scared a few good years off their lives.

"I see his infamous quips have survived him being shot by the little Sov princeling too," Spider cackles from where he's sitting, and excuse him but ow. "Although, I don't seem to remember him being that pink on the wanted posters passed around out here."

Wow, low blow. Asshole.

"Decided to change it up a little, gotta make sure they wouldn't recognize me straight away. It takes time to get this handsome every morning, you know."

He's ignoring the way that the Guardian is desperately wanting him to shut the Hell up, and he's having way too much fun right now to use his own filter.

Sorry, sweetheart

"Whatever keeps you feeling alive, I suppose," Spider examines the Ghost shell in his hand a bit more closely while answering them.

Talking about his death despite it never having happened for him is scary, not that he'd ever admit that to anyone currently in the same room as him, and even though it hasn't happened there's a brief moment where Cayde feels the hole that Spider's talking about in his chest. He's feeling around at his sternum before he can stop himself, letting the entirety of his hand spread out and just stay there. Nausea is coiling around the edges of his mind, as if he's been busy drinking the days away with hydrazine-spiked booze.

Thankfully the Guardian appears to still be able to take a bloody hint because it doesn't take long for her to finish up whatever business she needs to get done with Spider, and ain't that a whole can of worms that he doesn't look forward to try and open up later on.

Spider's gleaming eyes follow the two of them as Cayde and the Guardian disappear down a conjoining hallway and it's not until that they're far enough out of view and hearing that he steps closer to the Guardian, grabs her hand and holds onto it for dear, fucking life.

The meeting with that disgusting pile of Fallen crimelord makes him feel as if he's been dipped in sludge and left to dry somewhere on Mercury for at least a few centuries.

Ew

"Hell of a character, ain't he?" Cayde mutters and cracks a smile in what feels like an eternity when he hears the choked snort from the woman beside him. His fingers loosen around her hand and instead move to tangle with her own, lacing together like they were meant for nothing else.

"You are such a sap," Sundance is chittering through their private connection, but Cayde is the bigger person so he's ignoring her right now.

Yep.

Bigger person.

That's him.

"All in all it went… well," the Guardian notes. She's looking down at their laced-together hands like she still can't believe he's here. "I think?"

Every moment that passes is making Cayde want to just grab his gun, his Ghost and his darling, little protégé here before running for the hills.

"You phrased that as a question, why'd you do that? Questions are bad, especially when you're stuck out here."

"Hasn't killed me yet," is the only answer he gets out of her before she's stopping in front of a circular, locked door.

"Spider gave you your own room? What is this, Fallen Summer Scout Camp?"

Better watch his mouth or he'll end up somewhere bad out here. His question has her laughing though, so at least this one he can count as a win.

One more to write down

Cayde looks at her from underneath the pink travesty someone's dared to call a cloak and finally begins to unbuckle the clasps in the front while she's unlocking the door and ushering him inside like a right proper mother hen.

Colonel would be proud to see her right now, no doubt there.

The room is sparse, only containing a bunk barely big enough to hold maybe two people, a small light and a closed off space, probably for toiletries. The only signs that shows it being lived in is the fact that the bunk is a mess of blankets, pillows and whatnot else a bed might be expected to entail and a standard Tower-issued backpack resting against the headboard.

"You didn't correct him when he said that stuff 'bout me being resurrected."

His optics are making the room glow a soft blue and he finds that he can't take his eyes off her. Not now when she's standing there, bathed in soft light and looking way too innocent for all the shit she's gotten herself involved in.

"I don't want him knowing every single fucking detail about what I do," is all she answers as soon as the door is closed and the two of them are alone, really alone, at last. She doesn't look at him.

"Hey, look at me," Cayde sighs and steps closer to her. His hands come up to cup both of her cheeks, metal thumbs caressing her skin softly. "I'm here. I'm alive, y'hear."

"I know," she whispers and looks straight up at him. "Traveler's Light, I know, Cayde, but this… it…"

She breaks away from him and turns around to look at the bed, at the floor, anywhere but him.

"What?"

"It feels… too easy."

"How?"

"How? Cayde, you die, I go on the hunt for your killers and then, all of a sudden, you're back? Just like that?"

"It is quite convenient…" her Ghost agrees from where it's floating just above her shoulder. "How did you even get here, Cayde?"

Now it's his turn to find the floor or the walls or that very nice ceiling much more interesting than it probably ought to be.

"Oh, y'know… I have my ways."

"Cayde, honestly, I'm too fucking tired to deal with this kind of bullshit right now."

Wow, she's gotten blunt all of a sudden. What the Hell happened to the clingy, sobbing Guardian he'd seen not even two hours ago?

"Well…"

"Oh, don't tell me," Ghost sighs as it floats closer towards him, "You got into trouble, didn't you?"

"Well, not exactly."

"Traveler above, what did you do, Cayde?"

"I…" he's stalling, so fucking sue him, "I, uh… might have been poking at something that I shouldn't."

He swears, the fucking Ghost is narrowing its' eye at him right now.

"What 'something'?"

"Uh… Vex?" he's asking it like a question and he's an idiot and why hasn't the floor swallowed him up yet? The groan that sounds from both Guardian and Ghost certainly makes him wish for it to happen sooner rather than later. "I swear, I had everything under control!"

"You don't just go around poking Vex technology, Cayde!

"Funny, that's what the you I spoke to earlier said too."

"Gee, I wonder why!"

Since when did her Ghost learn to be such a snarky little fucker? He can't get it from her, there's just no way.

"Traveler, this is how you're here? You… you…" she starts laughing then and it takes a moment for Cayde to catch up before he's doubling over, laughing his ass off as if this is the funniest shit he's ever gotten away with.

Honestly, it's kind of hilarious and it's kind of tragical at the same time, that a member of the Vanguard has ended up in this situation, out of all possible people.

"What matters now is that you're here," she says and smiles at him. Before her Ghost can even protest, she's pressing her lips to his mouthplates, her smile like the Sun, "You're here."

The Ghost is making disgusted noises in the background. Cayde flips his middle finger at the little guy before burying both hands in her hair.

Cayde couldn't give less of a fuck right now.

She's here—he's here, she's willing—he's willing, and he needs it, Hell, they both do!

He needs the comfort of touch, of the recognizable and the safe. The—no, his Guardian probably needs the same, she just isn't as vocal about it. Cayde's willing to bet a lot that he can make that change.

"Urgh, get a room, you two."

With a dignified huff, the Ghost disappears from view when he begins sneaking his hands underneath his Guardian's shirt.

oOo

They end up on the small bed, legs and arms all tangled up and this is how he learns that it's only been three months.

"We went, just the two of us, to the Prison of Elders?"

"Everything was chaos out in the Reef. From what you told me, Petra contacted you personally and you were off before Zavala even knew what was going on."

"And… I ended up dead out there."

She's silent for a moment before nodding, the only hint that she's moving being the fact that her hair moves slightly against his jaw.

"Yeah…"

"What about Big Blue and Ikora? My guess is that all of this happening got them pretty rattled up." The scoff that leaves the Guardian has him straighten up sharply. "What?"

Her arms are crossed and a dark expression is making her look absolutely thunderous. She moves around and he lets go before she drags both of them over the edge of the bunk. When she stands up he stays exactly where he is.

"They did nothing."

It's ringing in Cayde's ears.

"No, no, that's—no, that's not possible. They're my fireteam, they had to have—"

"Oh, Ikora was shocked that you were gone, the Commander, too," she interrupts him. Her voice is strangely neutral, as if she's trying to distance herself from the fact that all of this had actually happened. "At the vigil we held for you, she raved about all of this was on Uldren's head and how she would personally take the Titans, Hunters and Warlocks on the hunt for his head, but in the end… it was all talk. Zavala just opened his mouth and said that we were no army and that there was no way he'd sanction any revenge against the Reef. Duty to the City and the Traveler came first. Both of them are still at the reconstructed Tower."

All of this is too much, too fast.

Cayde swallows, rests the back of his hand against his forehead while scratching at his horn. His mouth opens and closes again and again, because he wants to say something but he can't.

This revelation… it hurts. It hurt like a motherfucker, and the feeling is so eerily strange

"Clearly you didn't listen to any of that."

As far as comebacks goes, he could have done better. Could be worse, though, too.

"I watched you die right in front of me, tried to keep you alive through whatever means I had on me, and them telling me that there would be no repercussions? They're lucky it's only me and not the others as well out here."

"Yeah, 'bout that, where's the rest of your fireteam?"

"Somewhere on Io last I heard from them. Asher Mir's been running them ragged trying to "cleanse Io of the Vex plague", or something like that."

"I take it they weren't all that descriptive."

"Oh they were. Tora in particular sent a rather… colorful message to me a few days ago, actually. It was very educational."

"Tora's the… uh…"

"He's the Warlock, Cayde. You know this, you lost a bet on him around the last Crimson Days event."

"I did?"

"Sharpshooting while racing a sparrow across the courtyard ringing any bells?"

"Oh, him! Speaker's ankle socks, craziest bastard I've ever met; are we sure he's a Warlock?"

"His love for books and studying in the Light tend to be a dead ringer."

Cayde scoffs.

"Ikora won't miss him much, she has so many other little protégés to keep track of, don't she?"

"Beats me, I don't keep tabs on her."

Cayde hums and stretches out an arm. Without another word she grabs his hand and lets him drag her down into his arms.

This feels… nice, for lack of a better word.

"It feels like a dream—that you're here is… it's almost too good to be true."

"I better be the products of your wildest dreams or not at all," Cayde smiles, recounts the words he spoke so long ago, back when losing the Light, Cabal and regaining the City was the worst of their problems. Not her trying to deal with her grief through shooting criminals with extreme prejudice.

Her raspy laughter brings him out of his musings, draws his attention to her face which once more is dominated by tear-streaked cheeks and a quivering lip. He bends down, kisses her like it's the last time he'll ever do so, even though it's not. It'll never be, if he has anything to say.

He'll deal with her and the Barons later.

She just got him back—they can wait a little before returning to the real world.


	3. Chapter 3

It's nighttime, or at least whatever passes for nighttime out here on the Shore—with that weird, fucked up light the entire place is bathed in, one can never really be too sure.

Cayde is bored.

The Guardian is slumbering beside him, completely out of it and curled around him as if she's afraid that he'll leave if she lets go.

He'd be scared too if the roles were reversed.

But still, he's bored, and at the same time _really_ not in the mood for leaving the bed. It's nice and cozy down here beneath the blankets, and honestly, who'd want to move when they have a beautiful woman plastered against them?

Then again, Cayde is the farthest thing from objective on this particular specimen.

Still...

The datapad he finds in her backpack doesn't take long to hack and set up to bring sound only to his receiver.

What he finds on there isn't something he'll need to wake his Guardian for. Just a li'l peek, that's all he wants.

"Cayde?"

It's only her Ghost but he startles anyway, tension is surprisingly high in his body and it probably will be for the rest of his time here in the Tangled Shores.

"Hey there, little guy."

Cayde's absent as he looks through the video files, finds the section he's looking for and directs the datapad to run them.

What he finds almost makes him wish that he hadn't.

He sees arrogance, mischievousness, elation—feelings he's sure to experience when or if he leaves the Tower, but seeing his own face, even at a distance, make such an utter fucking _fool_ at himself is embarrassing beyond belief.

Seeing Sundance get killed because of his carelessness makes him let out a sound like a wounded animal but then she's there in a flash of light, gently bumping against his horn and he gently cups his hands around her, let her nuzzle against his neck and make soothing chirps and whirrs. He only sees it happen after the deed is long done, but everything inside his mind is screaming at him to cradle her close, never let her go and at the same time shoot himself for being such a _fucking idiot_.

Traveler above, this has to be the most idiotic thing he's done in a long-ass while.

Cayde breathes, shakes his head.

She's alive.

He's alive.

But something's missing. Something that's been bugging him ever since he heard it happen.

"You're looking for your death."

He looks up at the Guardian's Ghost and nods after a few tense seconds.

"I need to understand."

"You won't like it. She won't either."

"She doesn't need to know."

"I thought you'd stopped obsessing over my Guardian long ago."

Yeah, he thought so too.

Wait, obsess?

He knows that she got injured during the Red War, pretty serious too, because he'd pulled the Vanguard-card on Zavala and effectively locked him out of the loop completely about what would happen to his Guardian while she recovered. He'd been such a restrictive asshole back then, he could see that now, of course, but back then all he could think about when she set out again was that she was never going to come back again. They'd get a report from some of the other still-Lightless Guardians out in the field that she and the remains of her Ghost would be found, riddled with bullet holes. And that would be it. A romance he'd barely begun to think about would be nipped in the bud and he'd have to find some new kid to teach all his tricks, to use as his little replacement goldfish for the hole she might just leave behind if they weren't careful.

He never got around to demolish that base on Io completely, nor paying Mars a lovely little visit either, now that he's thinking about it.

Huh…

But that never happened. It wasn't needed after all.

She always got back again from missions after a few days, all bright and victorious with the biggest grin on her face as if she wanted nothing else but haul him into a supply closet and thoroughly kiss him long enough to fry a circuit or two.

His mind's a dangerous place when it wants to be.

"Never stopped, little guy," Cayde scoffs when he returns to the now and leans back against the headboard, one hand clutching at the datapad and the other curling around the Guardian's naked shoulder. She makes a content noise in her sleep and moves, searches for the warmth she had gotten from his body before he shuffled halfway out from below the covers. His answer is to get closer to her instead and let her drape herself around him like a starfish all she likes.

He knows what she's like in bed after having fun.

Ghost blinks at him a few times before he sighs and Cayde sees a new file appear on the datapad in his lap. When Ghost disappears in his own little flash of light, Cayde doesn't even bat an eye, already engrossed in the video.

_"CAYDE!"_

_"He didn't feel a thing."_

_"How… how's my hair?"_

_"There's nothing I can do… I'm so sorry."_

_"This ain't on you, kid."_

_"You tell Zavala and Ikora… the Vanguard… is the best bet… I ever… lost."_

Traveler above, no wonder she had been close to losing her fucking mind when she saw him and he kept insisting that yes, he was in fact the real deal. She'd had to try and cope with this shit, _his death_, on her own with only her Ghost to keep her from falling completely to pieces but it wasn't enough.

He looks down at her, oblivious in the throes of sleep. His hand strokes her hair, lingers between her shoulder blades and strokes the skin there softly, afraid that anything firmer will wake her from this much-needed rest.

"What happened to you?"

The question haunts him for the rest of the night.

* * *

It's morning, or at least what counts as morning here on the Tangled Shore.

He's slumbered off at some point during the night because he wakes to soft, human lips kissing their way down his chest and a soft wiggling body on top of his.

She's desperate with her motions in the same way she was yesterday. Pleasure is sought hard and fast. If it was any other place and any other day, Cayde would be over the moon for a surprise like this—and in bed no less, he's allowed to be lucky every once in a while, ain't he?—but the thought that something's wrong is still digging further into the back of his head. Normally he's all for quickies, he's gotten plenty of them too after they retook the City, too, but something about this strikes him as wrong.

Something's wrong. He doesn't know _exactly what_, but something's definitely wrong.

Then she wraps her lips around his cock and all logical thought abruptly flies out the proverbial window.

Neither of them leave the bed until much, _much_ later.

And it continues out of bed, he ain't shy where affection's concerned.

Cayde's only too shamelessly smug to admit that he still has his groove when he manages to thoroughly distract his Guardian in the shower stall.

After all, _anything_ can happen in a shower. She might slip and fall, and with all that delicate and soft skin there's no telling what horrible injury could befall her. So, _naturally_, he's with her to ensure that nothing goes wrong, that she doesn't miss a single spot when getting clean, and helping her get a little extra sticky in certain… _places_ before she really does have to get out there and continue on with her little revenge spree.

The way she doesn't stop rubbing that spot on her neck where a hickey is blooming does stroke his ego, though.

Just a little bit.

Petra's curt announcement that she's en route to Spider's lair has both of them quicken up as well.

Just a little bit.

* * *

Petra takes one good look at him before the knife-trick he always gushes over is hurled directly at him and pins him to the wall.

First thought that comes through his skull is, _OW_!

The second goes something along the lines of that he really shoulda seen it coming, at least when the Guardian reacted pretty much the same.

Internal warning notices pop up all over his vision while he's busy howling one expletive after the other at Petra. The Guardian is just looking at the two of them with a shit-eating grin on her face, the damn traitor.

He's going to find a much better use for that mouth before the day is done, that's a promise.

Sundance makes a gagging sound over their private connection that tells him everything he needs to know about what she thinks of his relationship with the Guardian. Cayde responds very maturely by blowing a raspberry at his Ghost.

Pfah, like he cares.

Just a little bit of course, she is his Ghost, after all.

"How are you alive? _How_?!"

"I didn't die, not on my end, PV," Cayde sighs and runs a hand over his face, tips catching on his horn briefly. "I never even knew about this rampage of revenge-business until she-" he points at the Guardian, wincing because of the wound until Sundance finally takes pity on him, "-told me about it."

Petra's lips are pressed thin and she doesn't look happy about his answer, and honestly it is kind of shitty if he has to be frank, but it's the best he has.

"Then how are you here?"

"Trust me, you _really_ don't want to know."

Oh, _now_ his Guardian decides to defend him. _Wonderful_.

Petra's eyes narrow.

"At least not where Spider can overhear," Ghost elaborates with a barely concealed bout of laughter.

Cayde flips him the middle finger behind the Guardian's back. Ghost makes a rude noise back at him.

He's horrified. Absolutely horrified. Whatever happened to the cute and cuddly Ghost that brought back an equally ruffled and oh-so-confused baby Guardian fresh from the Cosmodrome?

The kids sure grow up quick these days.

Petra keeps looking at him just like the Guardian did yesterday—like he's going to disappear in a fistful of smoke when she blinks or turns her head or just takes another step towards him. It hurts, a little bit, that his friends and dear ones can't fully accept the fact that he's here, but he… gets it.

They saw him die, one of them right before their own eyes, and if he'd been in their shoes there's little doubt that he'd have reacted in the same way.

By the Traveler, if Andal had walked in through the front door in the Tower, tipping the edge of his cloak like he was wearing a damn top-hat and grinning that daft smirk he always had on his face, Cayde'd have been up the wall and aiming a gun at him the second after. He'd never believe it, he saw the corpse that was brought back, something that would never fade, no matter how many times he'd get reset.

Never.

So he doesn't blame them.

He throws the knife back at Petra, grinning when she catches it and sheathes it with a huff.

Still the PV he knows, all business until you crack through that tough little shell'o hers. Then she's the softest, cuddliest Awoken he can think of.

At least a cuddly Awoken with a penchant for throwing knives and sniper rounds at her problems until they fuck off.

* * *

One of the weirdest things happen when he saunters back to the hideout with Petra and his Guardian in tow, and they pass through Spider's lair.

The Fallen almost looks as if he's doing a double take at Cayde when he walks by and mock-salutes the big guy.

The guttural yell of _Eliksni_ stops Cayde dead in his tracks and has him reaching for the handle of his Ace within seconds, but then Petra's there with a hand on his shoulder and dragging him off down the hallway while the Guardian—_his_ soft little Guardian walks over to Spider and starts trading barbs and insults like she's done it her whole life and not just for three grueling, blood-filled months.

"She'll clear it up, Cayde," Petra hisses into his audio units, grip tightening when he struggles to get loose. "Whatever that was, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about."

Her words ought to satisfy him, but they don't.

She throws him into the room he shared with the Guardian just this evening, wrinkling her nose at the smell of stale air and sex that still lingers faintly.

Cayde just starts to pace.

Sundance pops into existence and plants herself in one of the folds between his neck and his scarf, constantly rubbing against his plating there and simply just being there in his personal space.

He's almost embarrassed to admit how effective that little act alone is in making him calm down. But he doesn't stop pacing. He doesn't stop the scowl he sends Petra when the Awoken spits at him to sit down instead of acting like a child. He's allowed to act childish—although, really he's not—and therefore flips her a rude gesture. Petra then flashes her knife trick.

Cayde sits down after that.

He starts tapping the tips of his feet against the floor instead, one hand reaching up to scratch at Sundance as she nuzzles closer to his neck-plates and gives off small, soothing chirps.

He has the most awesome Ghost in the whole system, and he'll fight anyone who says otherwise.

The atmosphere inside their room only grows more tense as the minutes roll by, Cayde just about ready to vault up at even the smallest of sounds and it's getting on Petra's nerves. He can tell. She's glaring at him from the corner of her eye, following every motion he makes as if she still cannot truly believe that he's there.

His Guardian looked at him the same way when he'd blown his own cover.

"I, uh…"

Nothing comes to mind. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. There's nothing he can think of to start a conversation.

It's a little embarrassing.

Petra looks at him. He's stopped pacing and just stands in the middle of the small room with wringing hands and tries to look at everything and nothing at the same time. He's not really succeeding in not appearing like some sort of illusion.

"It makes no sense," Petra spits out from where she's sitting and turns away. "_It makes no sense_!"

"Trust me, I'm as weirded out 'bout the whole thing as you are, Petra."

She lets out a bitter short-lived laugh at _that_ comment. "Oh really? No quick-witted remark or bombastic solution to the situation? You don't much sound like the Cayde I know."

"Well, I've had a lot happen to me within the last forty-something hours. Cut a guy some slack, would ya?" Cayde says and leans against the wall.

A smile plays on his lips but only just. If he openly grins at Petra, he's afraid she'll stick her fucking knife in him again. This time somewhere not as easily healable as his shoulder.

Fortunately for him, the door opens without warning and the Guardian stumbles inside. She looks… _weird_, eyes unseeing, almost as if she's not all there yet.

"Guardian?"

Petra's by her side immediately and for a moment as he watches his old pal take his Guardian by the hand, and lead her towards the bed, he feels… annoyance? Annoyance at Petra? For taking the Guardian's hand? Jeez, what's the world coming to…

"It was… weird," Ghost says from where he's hovering beside his Guardian. "The Spider kept asking when Cayde had gotten here."

An eyebrow-plate is raised delicately in a mock of a curious expression. "Excuse me?"

"That's what she said as well," Ghost gestures to the Guardian with a dip. "He was very confusing."

"But… she told him yesterday!" Cayde exclaims as a hand comes up to scratch at his beautiful, blue horn. "I—we traded quips! For a moment there I actually thought we had a connection!"

"Cayde, be serious!" Petra snaps.

"_I am being seri_—"

"He forgot you."

The Guardian's quiet remark has everyone silent.

"I'm sorry—what now?"

"Spider," she elaborates. Her hand reaches out to curl around Cayde's and he lets her tug him closer without a thought. "He'd forgotten about you completely. Almost as if—" she cuts herself off before the sentence is finished, and Cayde is _screaming_ inside.

As if what? _AS IF WHAT, DAMN IT_?!

"As if you were never here to begin with."

"Technically I'm not."

The grip around his hand turns into a vice.

"Yes, you _are_," his Guardian denies, rather vehemently at that. "You're here. You're alive."

"Not necessarily the Cayde that you know," Petra argues. "I've no doubt that this is Cayde, or at least a version of Cayde that we all here recognize, but he might very well simply be just that: a version of Cayde."

"You're talking about multiple worlds."

Petra nods.

"It _is_ possible," Ghost agrees. He's slow in speaking, but agree with all of this nonsense he does.

Cayde is just feeling more and more like something cold is crawling beneath his exterior plating.

"But—no!" his Guardian spits out Her hand is twitching around his as if it wants to clamp down even harder than it already it. "This doesn't make any sense! The chances of Cayde being thrown into another reality, a reality where he's in a relationship with me, are too small."

"Normally I would say yes," Petra nods in agreement, but it's almost as if it doesn't really go all the way up to her eye. "However, the Universe still holds secrets for us. There's no telling how it came to be that he landed here, but I doubt that it was by mere coincidence."

"But I got here through Vex tech," Cayde joins the discussion now, there's no way in Hell that they're gonna talk over his head when he's in the damn room. "I know they're not exactly set in stone when it comes to all the variables, but I have to stick with my Guardian on this one. The chances of them throwing me across not just time, but _space_, and then into another dimension where I just so _happens_ to have a relationship with the aforementioned Guardian?"

"The chance is still there."

"Not big enough to influence so many things."

"You need to take this serious, Cayde! We don't really know how you even got here," Ghost is stuck on this one, he can _tell_. "All we know is what you told the Guardian and I about the Vex technology that you were tinkering with. Who knows if you did something that altered where the portal went."

"I _am_ taking it serious!"

"The first time you kissed me," the Guardian suddenly asks. Her voice is quiet but it cuts through the escalating discussion with ease. His attention is back on her immediately, but what he meets there almost has him reeling. Her eyes are practically begging him for something that he's not even sure he can give.

"This is hardly the time for—"

"Shush," Cayde hisses at both Petra and Ghost—he doesn't take his eyes off the Guardian in front of him.

"When you kissed me for the first time," she repeats, almost hesitantly now. "Where were we?"

He's silent as he looks at her, long and hard as if the answer's hidden somewhere inside her eyes, but he doesn't see an answer no matter how hard he's looking. If Petra is right about this, if he really is from some other reality where Cayde-6 hasn't fucked off without giving proper notice or warnings to his own Fireteam, then…

Then there's no real answer to her question. There's no way for him to know if what he'll say is right, if it's _wrong_. Traveler, he hopes this ain't it.

She's had enough taken away from her already—humanity, self-preservation, happiness, _love_—and now she might just be about to lose everything that she has just gotten back.

"_Cayde_."

Her voice is sounding like a rusty door jammed on its just-as-rusty hinges—it grates on his audio units, sends harsh static over every sensor he has like nails against a chalkboard, or metal whining against metal.

He closes his eyes and steels himself for whatever's going to happen after this.

"The Tower," he answers resolutely. "The first time I ever kissed you was during the first Dawning after we had retaken the City from the Cabal."

Her eyes are still staring at him, completely unblinking. He just stares right back at her, can't help it.

Then, they dim.

The fire that's been burning inside of them ever since she realized that he was real just… _dies out_.

She releases his hand and moves to stand up. When he attempts to go closer to her she shies away from his touch, and it _burns_.

"Guardian…"

"No," she says and shakes her head. Her eyes are fastened at the ground. "Not right now."

"Guardian, you can't jus—"

"No," she repeats and heads for the door. She's out of the room and down the hall before either Petra or Cayde can say a single thing. Her hands are clenched tight enough for the leather to creak under the pressure.

"_Meera_!" her Ghost yells out and immediately hovers after his Guardian.

Cayde just stands there. Petra is moving closer to him, his systems pick up her motions automatically, but he doesn't move. He can't.

She's not his real Guardian. He's not her real Vanguard. But if they're not each other's, then whose fucked up idea was this that he was supposed to end up here?

"Cayde, I'm…" Petra is hovering awkwardly beside him. She looks remorseful, honest-to-God remorseful.

He couldn't give less of a fuck right now.

"_Don't_," he sighs. "Don't—don't you dare say that you're sorry. Sorry doesn't fix this, doesn't fix the fact that neither of us have any idea what's goin' on, and now we have to deal with the fact that I'm not even from the same dimension as you."

He's taking it out on her and it's not fair, not fair at all. He knows that—_he fucking knows, alright_?!

But he can't help it.

"I'll… I'll find the Guardian," Petra says quietly and steps away from him, eye downcast and a sour grimace is stretched across her face. Good. Cayde hopes its eating at her just as much as it is him.

When his friend leaves him alone in the room he doesn't even look up. He's still standing there like a complete ingrate.

"Cayde?"

Great, 'Dance is out now. Just _fucking great_.

"Cayde, you need to calm down," she says but all he can think about is that her trying to reason with him is just about the cutest thing he's ever heard.

He's not real, not in this world at least. Here he's dead, buried six feet under by a Vanguard that's barely even functioning. Cayde's been in shittier situations, sure, but this… this really tops all of it.

"I don't know what to do, 'Dance," he says, head buried in his hands as he flops back down on the bed. "I fucked this up good, and I don't know how to get out of this one."

"Well, she didn't exactly make it easy for you, did she?"

He knows that she's talking about the Guardian, about _Meera_, who had smiled like he'd hung the Sun and the Moon and the stars too, for that matter, just this morning. They had been _happy_, believing nothing could go wrong as they fooled around in bed.

And Petra had crushed of all that without even a hint of subtlety.

Just one question—one fucking question was all it took for everything to fall down around their ears.

That weird feeling of _wrongness_ is growing in the back of his mind, pulsing and twisting the more he pays it attention.

Cayde leaves the bed. He jumps up onto his feet, swings his arms back and forth a few times before he walks over to the nearest wall and slams a fist into it.

Breaking something _helps_, gives him something to work with, something to center on that isn't human and teary eyed and hanging on his every word.

A screech from his comm has him jerk in surprise, hand still buried halfway through the wall and ready to power the damn thing down, but Sundance is quicker than he is and has accepted the incoming message before the thought is even finished on his part.

The sounds that come through cuts into his audio units like a dull razor into flesh.

Screams of some kind, he can't tell if they're human or Awoken or even Fallen, are glitching through, and over it all he hears a familiar static-y voice.

"—yde? Sundance? Requesting backup, Guardian down, _Guardian down_!"

It's her Ghost.

It's his Guardian's Ghost.

Cayde's up before he hears the repeated 'Guardian down' and storming down the hallway. He passes Fallen on the way but Spider must have spread the word that any Guardians found on his premises are not to be harmed because they are jumping out of the way for him before he gets too close.

Sundance is out of sight—neither of them trust the creatures around them not to try and take a shot at her. And after what he saw last night about how she died here in this time and reality, he's only going to be even more protective of her.

He has no idea where Petra is, why Ghost hasn't mentioned her in the slightest, and as he grows more and more agitated, he begins to feel it again.

Solar Energy. His Golden Gun.

There in its holster he feels Ace tremble—feels the hand cannon react to its wielder's want and desires and _yes oh how he's missed this_!

Action again, real proper action that's not a simulated training exercise or a Crucible match he can't even compete in because Shaxx still refuses to let him within five feet of any of the arenas.

He's not going down without a fight, he's not going down, _period_.

She's in trouble, his Guardian is in trouble, and there's going to be fucking _Hell_ to pay if whoever the enemy is so much as _scratches_ her.


	4. Chapter 4

"_Every story is true if you tell it right_."

Andal told him that once. Back before that first round with Taniks, back before the Vanguard and the Dare and the second round with Taniks and all the other shit that Cayde got himself involved in back when he was young and cocky and stupid.

Traveler above, he was stupid back then.

Oh, he was quick in a fight and a Gunslinger practically born with a Golden Gun in his hand, but inside his head? All Cayde had in there back then were lofty ideas of loot, alluring women and booze. And Andal, of course—can't forget him.

The Shore is a fucking _mess_.

The perfect place for a Gunslinger—just enough chaos for no one to keep a close eye on them, yet not crowded enough that the chaos works against their agenda.

His agenda is simple: get to the Guardian, kill anyone standing in his way.

Honestly, it's foolproof. Easy. As simple as his old plan back in the day with Ghaul that involved nothing else but him, a Vex teleporter and a gun.

So, of course, it goes utterly, completely _wrong_.

Oh, everything is nice and easy in the beginning of it all. He's running towards the coordinates that his Guardian's Ghost throws at him and Sundance before too much interference cuts them off, guns blazing, knives ready and not giving a damn about the fact that practically every living being with a working set of eyes can see who he is.

The stench of gunpowder, blood, body fluids—it all throws itself at his sensors and Cayde _revels_ in it. This was how it felt when they took back the City from the Cabal, the ghostly touch of an adrenaline high rushing through his body, the feel of his gun in his hand and the finger clenching the trigger, the recoil when he pulls it and the bullets are let loose from the chamber, the raw strength of the weapon.

He loves it.

He _misses_ it, already.

Cayde vaults over a boulder, a knife ready for the Fallen dreg that's screeching at him with everything it's got and a bullet for the Vandal close by.

Both are dead before the thought to reach for their weapons is processed; Cayde is left standing ready to blow the spoke from the barrel of his gun.

_Yup, still got it_.

His mad sprint towards the Guardian continues.

He hears Sundance scream at him through their connection—she calls him every rude thing she can think of, in English and then in _Eliksni_ when she runs out of things to say in the first language. She must'a overheard him and the ol' guys sometimes from back in the day with the things she's spewing out of her nonexistent mouth.

Cayde cracks a grin, reloads his gun, and is off again before he ever stops to catch a not-needed breath.

He wonders, how will this story need to be told?

Is it going to be like those old western movies from before the Collapse, him standing off against some criminal scum, mano a mano?

Maybe all he needs is rush in, gun blazing like a fucking firework show and just start shooting them before they shoot him. The idea could work, he's not against it…

"Perhaps what you need is an overview of the situation before you go in and get yourself killed, hm?"

He has no idea how she does it but Petra's back and Cayde's never been happier to see her, even if she does stink just a little bit of Fallen guts and has gore in her otherwise-impeccable hair.

"What happened?"

"She went off to think and the next thing I know there's a horde of Scorned around the place. The Guardian rushed in there," Petra gestures with her free hand towards a gaping hole in a tombship not far from where they are, "shrieking like a woman possessed, and the Hive disappeared after that."

Wait.

Wait just a gosh diddly-dang damn minute, now.

"There are _Hive_ out here?"

Petra's grim, for once looking quite scary and plenty wrathful for a Queen-less Wrath of the Queen, but she's dead serious as she nods.

The screech of something ungodly reaches his audio sensors—it's coming from inside that Tombship.

_Fuck_.

"They're stragglers," Petra elaborates. She's waving her gun at the tombship like it's a wasp tittering too close to her face. "There's just enough of them to pose but a minor annoyance to the Fallen and their operations out here. Our only problem is the fact that the Mindbender apparently has the whole bunch of them wrapped around his little finger."

The Mindbender…

_She_ was talking about him when Cayde first got here, something about him still needing locating.

Well, someone obviously got impatient waiting for their date to turn up.

"Not long after she went in there, I heard her Ghost scream 'Guardian down', and then I waited here for you."

"So they're both in there?"

"No, just her. Or, well, her body."

The way Petra's talking about his Guardian lying dead in a ditch somewhere in a crashed tombship is enough to have serious shivers running down Cayde's spine.

"Where's her Ghost?"

"Somewhere close by, he keeps moving in order to make sure that the Hive doesn't notice his location."

"Smart little guy."

Cayde's gotta give'im that.

Little guy knows when to stay down and what to do if his Guardian loses her shit and goes off on a crazy rampage on her own.

He'll have words with her about that when they're back in Spider's lair, back in their room and he can have her for himself for only a few minutes—long enough time to talk things over and make a plan.

Because they need a plan.

This isn't working as they are right now, and he's barely even been here for over 48 hours.

Finding the little Ghost is easy, almost laughably so, but then again, they have Sundance to thank for most of the help while Cayde's constantly scared out of his damn mind that some asshole Fallen is going to sneak up on them with a gun and take her out.

Petra's cool as a cucumber about the whole fucking thing.

His Guardian's—Meera's—Ghost? Not so much.

"She's in there, and she's _alone_!"

The Ghost is wailing. Cayde has absolutely no idea how he does it, but the little guy is wailing and practically falling apart at the seams as his lens flickers back and forth in front of the giant hole into the tombship.

"You're not goin' in there, at least not alone," Cayde orders without a second thought because fuck no is he losing the Light of one of his Guardians, more specifically _his_ Guardian.

Fuck. _No_.

"She's alone in there, Cayde!" the Ghost just screams at him but even it knows not to just disappear straight into the Hive den.

If it does, the Guardian is as good as dead. For real this time with no second chances.

Petra's sharp intake of breath distracts him for a moment and he catches her eye, a question begging to be released. She shakes her head at his silent question.

They can't keep a Ghost from their Guardian; to do so would be cruel beyond measure, and both of them know it. Cayde has seen it firsthand from when Fireteams have returned, broken and shellshocked from the enemy being far stronger than they had anticipated. Petra has probably seen several scores of Guardians falling to pride while out in the Reef and watching as their Light is ripped from them by cold, hard reality.

"We'll get you to her," he soothes the Ghost and rubs a gloved finger over one of the Ghost's many spikes. "We'll get you to her, and you can rez her until you're exhausted down to the core. That's a promise."

"I'm half between wanting to ask you to just chain her to the wall somewhere and letting her throw herself at every damn Scorned like she's a battering ram," the Ghost moans. He's mollified, if only slightly, at Cayde's words, but the nervous hovering has yet to cease. "She's a Hunter, not a Titan, Traveler above!"

"Good luck getting _that_ through to her," Petra snorts.

Cayde responds with a rude gesture. He graciously overlooks how Petra simply ignores it all in favor of checking her sidearm.

"How do we get in?"

"Uh, through the front door?" the Ghost quips like no one's business. Cayde's still not sure if he likes it or not. It's still up in the air.

"Alright, let me rephrase that one. How do we get in, without ending up like a Ghost-, Guardian- and Awoken-flavored smear on the walls?"

"Through the front door. With guns."

Alright, he takes all and every doubt back. This Ghost is going places.

"And people wonder how you and your Guardian has survived for so long."

"Shut up."

* * *

They find her with her hand stretched out towards an auto rifle and a horde of slaughtered thrall around her.

Cayde just stands there, frozen. He takes in everything, from the empty, un-seeing look in her eyes to the way her fingers are starting to stiffen after who knows how long. He hasn't tried to make sense of the time since he ran out of the Spider's lair like a bat out of Hell. It's there somewhere, code imbedded into his core systems that knows what the time is.

Blood drips from the walls—black from the Hive specked with dots of crimson. _Her blood_.

Her eyes—Meera's eyes—are just staring straight ahead, sightless. A puddle of blood has formed under her body, too. It's sticky and beginning to form the tiniest of crusts around the edges.

"Gods…"

The sound that his Guardian's Ghost makes at the sight of her is inhuman. Like _nothing_ he's ever heard before.

"_Meera_!"

A flash of light, the form of Light that the Traveler has blessed the Solar System with, blinds both him and Petra and then the eerily quiet tombship is filled with heaving, ragged breaths as her broken helmet is ripped from her head and thrown somewhere behind her.

Her whole body seizes as life returns to it, as it courses through her veins, and a desperate, wild bout of coughing echoes loudly within the tombship's halls. Cayde is at her side in moments, on his knees and brushing her sweat and blood-slickened hair out of her face with a gentleness few have ever witnessed. Her Ghost buzzes around her, his surveying beam scanning every single scrape that's to find on her skin and healing it immediately. Cayde gets her turned onto her back and tangles his fingers with hers as he just keeps stroking her cheek, murmuring quiet nothings to calm her down.

"C-Cayde?" her voice is quiet and her eyes are wild—wild and flickering and disbelieving.

"Yup," he's grinning through the pain, through the shock of seeing a Guardian—_his Guardian,_ damn it!—dead on the ground like a butchered animal. "'m right here, sweetheart. I'm right here."

"T-the D-Darkness," she's still heaving for breath as he gets her off the ground and right into his arms instead. "It was _e-everywhere, touching me_!"

Delirium is edging in now, flavoring this twisted mockery of a lovers' reunion in sour, dour notes as her hands dig into his shoulder pads and the harder padding that protects his sides.

"Shhh," he hushes her with sweet croons and gentle motions. Out of the corner of an eye he sees Petra glance at them briefly whilst circling the chamber they found Meera in. When the Wrath stops for a moment to get a better look at her condition, he shakes his head as subtly as he can and makes a motion for her to continue scouting the perimeter with his hand.

Surprises won't do them much good in here.

"_Meera_!" her Ghost cries and burrows against her neck, shivering as if cold and sounding all-together quite miserable. "You're _alive_."

"I'm alive," she nods against Cayde, hands still tightly buried in his armor, and the delirium still present. It's making her voice high and scratchy—it's almost enough to start hurting his audio sensors. "Traveler above, I'm _alive_."

"Deep breaths, kid," Cayde murmurs. "Deep, deep breaths now."

"Perimeter's safe," Petra calls from wherever she is in the room.

Cayde won't ever admit to anyone how much those two words relaxes him.

"Check again, for safety's sake," he answers her and barely waits for Petra's accepting shout before his attention focuses in on the shivering Guardian in his arms.

Her sickly pallor and the stiffness from the beginnings on rigor mortis are fading as her Ghost works its magic and erases all traces of her being gone, dead to the world. The tears and rips in her armor cannot be mended, but if Cayde is being completely honest here then he's not so sure that she even cares about that at this point.

How could he?

"Meera," he's muttering against her hair now, "Meera, you're safe. We've got you."

"You're still here…"

"Of course I am!"

If he looks offended at her choice of words Cayde wants to count that one as a win in his book. Because he is. Her emotions are going haywire and he's not sure if it's the stress she's been under for so long, or if it's from seeing him alive again, but he's fucking done with this shit.

It must show on his face because almost as soon as the words from before leave his mouth she's struggling to get out of his arms and onto her own two, wobbly feet.

It's almost pathetic to look at.

"I have to get going."

Her words bring the chill back down Cayde's spine. He stares at her in shock, in utter disbelief because there is no fucking way that anyone can be so fucking _stupid_—

"The Hell you are!"

His shout echoes. Petra glances at them from the entrance in worry, but Cayde ignores it. All he can think about right now is the woman in front of him—the woman he thought was his but aren't and he can't accept this because she's here and he's here and everything is wrong.

Everything is right too, at the same time, but it's weird and strange and all he really longs for right now is just to shoot the first unfortunate fucker of a dreg that comes within viewing distance for him and a long drink.

Not necessarily in that order, either.

She's scared. He can see it plain as day.

But if she's scared then why, in the name of all that is holy, is she staggering towards the giant opening _where all the Hive-y sounds are coming from_?!

"_What_ are you _doing_?" he hisses and gestures towards the hole leading outside. "Exit's _that_ way, you idiot!"

"Only good thing about this is that the Mindbender came out of hiding," he hears her say. When he looks over at her, a wicked grin has spread across Meera's face. "I am not letting him get away again!"

"There's too many! You won't make it!"

She's looking more feral beast than human in that moment.

"Watch me," is all she says before she disappears through the hole, ignoring Cayde's yells the entire time.

He doesn't follow.

He wants to, oh how he wants to, but he doesn't.

Instead he waits for her. He waits for her to come back to him, just like back at the Farm, just like back at the Tower before he touched stuff that shouldn't be touched, and he simmers in anger.

Petra checks her gun again. She does that quite a lot out here, actually, but he stores it somewhere in the back of his mind.

Right now, all he wants to focus on is her, Meera.

Why did she go? Why couldn't she just come back to the hideout with him and they could figure this out, _he_ could figure out how to make her stop this shit, because it's tearing her apart and leeching the Light from her body with every moment that she is spending out here.

But she doesn't come back.

So, he waits in silence.

* * *

When she returns to the Spider's lair she is covered in bruises from top to toe, holding the shredded remains of the auto rifle they found her reaching for, and positively _vibrating_ with energy.

The Darkness is coiled around her like an oil-covered viper.

Cayde spends the time before she comes to their shared room dry heaving, despite the fact that he doesn't have a stomach to empty and all that comes out of his mouth is small spills of oil and other lubricating substances that keep his body running.

He doesn't look at her when she enters. Just keeps on listening to Sundance as she hovers above his shoulder and mutters encouragements to him through their private connection. It's comforting and familiar and right now this is what Cayde needs because he is barely keeping it together, as it is.

Meera doesn't look at him.

Her Ghost hovers above her shoulder, and even Cayde can feel how the uncomfortable atmosphere is weighting the poor guy out.

"The Mindbender is dead."

Four words is all it takes.

He's looking up at her, the back of his hand wiping at his stained mouth-plates. He's disappointed in her. It's thick in the air between them.

"Meera," he starts. He needs to continue this, pussying out of this is not acceptable. "Do you have any idea of what is happening right now?"

"I'm avenging _your_ death."

"Listen, this ain't right. You know this, I know this."

"I did—I'm _doing_ this for you; I've ripped through the Barons for _you_, Cayde!"

"Yeah, well, I never asked you to!"

He watches as the Guardian stills almost immediately, completely stiffens before him. He's never raised his voice to a shout, not to her—not for a _very_ long time.

But he ain't done yet.

No siree.

"This… this _quest_ you've gone on to avenge me of all things is first of all, _insanely stupid_! Second, what were you _thinking_ going against these Fallen _on your own_? Did you not read through any of the materials that we had on the Prison of Elders?"

He's furious—actually sees _red,_ because in his mind there's just no way that a Guardian singlehandedly could manage that many adversaries against them, no matter how powerful they were.

There's just no fucking way.

"They slaughtered you!" she yells right back at him, fury glittering in her eyes and hands clenched tight enough to whiten. "They _killed_ you and you expect me to just take that lying down?!"

"No, I would have expected you to at the very least take enough backup so that you would never be in a position like the one you were in today!"

"The Vanguard forbid it! What was I supposed to do when they said no to every single solution that I dished out at them?!"

"Obviously they weren't good enough, or they would have acted!"

"Is that what you think, that what I asked of them was just some half-assed idea that I hadn't thought through? They did _nothing_ for you or me, Cayde! Zavala held speeches, like he always does, and Ikora, for all that she raved about revenge, never got off her ass and _did something about it_!"

"They both have responsibilities at the Tower to you and the rest of the Guardians that're still out there in the galaxy, risking their lives and _doing their fucking jobs_!"

She goes silent, just stops and stares at him like he's told her the most horrible thing that she cannot come to terms with.

"'Doing their fucking jobs'?" she repeats softly before she hurls the wrecked gun in her hand towards the farthest wall. The noise grates against his audio sensors. "'_Doing their fucking jobs_'?!"

Wrong thing to say, cowboy.

"Listen, what I meant was—"

"I stopped _everything_ for you, Cayde," she interrupts, her tone of voice deceptively quiet as she stalks closer to him. "_I_ was the one who held everything together for three weeks straight after you died in that fucking prison. _I_ was the one trying to guide the new Guardians as they wandered around, looking lost and confused without a Vanguard to guide them, because Traveler knows that Zavala nor Ikora had time to help the new Hunters. No, they let us do that ourselves. _I_ was the one trying to bring reports together because every single senior Hunter ditched the Tower the moment that someone would mention the Vanguard, and _I_ was the one—"

Cayde sits down at the bed at this point, hearing everything she is saying and still feeling angry _because he should have been there_! She never should have had to try and shoulder everything, Zavala and Ikora had a duty to help her out because being thrown into everything like that was horrible, he'd tried it himself with Andal back in the day, and oh, how he had been so fucking lost those first days before Ikora had finally taken pity on him and sat him down, explaining _everything_.

She had done this shit alone for _weeks_ and no one had done _anything_.

"—Petra contacts me and says that she's found them, she's found those fuckers who just watched you get executed and butchered like an animal, and I just let go of everything, because the Hunters were simmering and wanted blood, but no one would _do_ anything, and I was tired! I was tired of—"

"Alright, _enough_!" he screams at her, stands up from the bed and has his hands wrapped around her arms in seconds.

"Let go of me!"

"Not on your fucking life!"

"Cayde, I said _let go_!"

He doesn't answer her this time, just tightens his grip and stares straight into her eyes as she begins to rave and scream at him, calling him every curse word she can think of on the spot, and it continues like that for who knows how long.

This solves nothing.

Them screaming at each other for the other's faults is poisonous, it feeds the Darkness that already clings to his Meera like a second skin, and Cayde… Cayde is fucking _tired_.

"This has to stop, Meera."

His words make her stop shaking in his arms, stills her long enough for him to catch her eyes.

"This isn't—I don't want…" Cayde sighs. "I have to go back, Meera. Back to where I came from."

She freezes.

"No."

"Listen, kid, I have to—"

"_No_!"

His Guardian is falling apart right in front of him.

Tears are rolling down her cheeks as she looks at him with despair in her pretty eyes. Her lip is quivering, he notes. All of this shit is because of him. He did this to her, made her into this mess of a woman.

"You… you can't _do this_!"

Cayde steels himself. He has to do this because this cannot continue, this future that he's found himself in simply cannot be allowed to continue.

"If I don't do this, things are gonna end real bad, and we both know this. The Traveler—"

"_Fuck the Traveler_!" she screams at him. "It did _nothing_ when you died! It did _nothing_ when the Cabal attacked the Last City! If the Traveler is supposed to represent the Light and everything good, _then why did it let you die_?!"

Cayde looks at her, just looks at her, and sees a broken, terrified girl look right back at him. From outside the room he can hear Fallen chitter as they pass through the hallway. He doesn't move a muscle.

"Don't go. Cayde, _please_!" she is sobbing, just looking up at him from where she has collapsed in the floor. "_Please_, Cayde…"

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Cayde sighs and kneels down in front of her, wipes off a smudge of dirt on her cheek. He smiles and tries to look reassuring, tries to be what she needs him to be right now. "If I could make this right all proper I would, you know that I would. But I don't belong here."

"Cayde…"

"Every moment I stay here, we're that much closer to something fracturing that ain't supposed to get broken. I might not be the brightest there is, but I at least get _that_. Gimme some credit where it's due."

She doesn't answer him. She just sits there—this wonderful, broken, scared little girl who's just had her entire reason for being out here taken away from her, and revenge screaming in her ear to just keep on going, keep on making the assholes who killed this world's Cayde pay with everything they've got.

"This… this ain't right, Meera," Cayde sighs, thumbs still caressing her cheeks. "It ain't right and we need to fix this. I don't belong here."

"But you _do_! You're still Cayde!"

"I'm not your Cayde, though, am I?"

"That doesn't matter!"

"But it _does_ matter, Meera. Somewhere out there in whatever dimension I came from, there's a Hunter Guardian named Meera, just like you, who's missing her Vanguard. I've seen what's happened when I die, I saw that here, today, and I saw how you coped with the fact that my killers were close at hand. I don't want my Meera to ever experience something like _this_."

The tears are still running down her cheeks.

"I don't know what to do anymore, Cayde," she cries and leans forward. He accepts her without a word. "I don't know what to do, and I'm _s-scared_."

"I know," he says. "I'm sorry."

He can do little else but hold her. Hold her, tell her that everything will be alright, even if he knows, deep down in his heart, that nothing will ever make this right.

Nothing.


	5. Chapter 5

_"Is this… all what we are?"_

_"What do you mean?"_

_"Are we nothin' but dust in the wind, nothin' but a fleeting comet in the eyes of the universe?"_

_"One would think so. But this shows that everything is so much more frail than anyone could have realized, Cayde."_

_"Guess you're right, 'Dance. Just... just never thought it'd be me, y'know?"_

_"Don't worry about it. She's strong. She'll pull through."_

_"That's what I'm afraid of. That she'll pull through and still not be satisfied."_

* * *

"Something's wrong. People are beginning to forget me."

"But you're right here!"

The argument has been going in circles for hours.

He's begun to feel the stress really catching up to him for about twenty minutes or so, but not a single word of it passes his mouth plates.

It won't help him.

It won't help _her_ either.

"Something is definitely going on here," Petra persists, "The Light is twisted around you, Cayde, as if you're not really a part of this universe. I may not be a Guardian, but we Awoken can still tell when the Light has been tampered with, and you are positively _reeking_ of that right now."

"Because I travelled through time and space?"

He's not usually like this, not usually crackin' out the stellar observation skills and brainpower that he actually has access to, but seldom uses.

Normally Ikora has enough brain activity for the whole Vanguard, he rarely, if ever, has to engage himself.

But not this time. This time there ain't no Ikora to save him, no Zavala to come up with a battleplan.

Not that he needs one right now. Cayde's more than sure that you can't just punch a hole between realities without facing some _serious_ repercussions.

Cayde tunes back when Petra's about to answer him.

"It might very well be exactly because of that."

"But what does it mean?"

"What it means is that this reality is rejecting you—it is the only solution I can think of with so little evidence at the moment. Right now, it is only affecting people who didn't know you very well, those who had only heard about you or maybe met you once or twice. But in the end… if this continues, it would mean that even those you were closest to… Hell, even the Guardian would forget you."

Getting kicked in the stomach would hurt less.

His darling Guardian looks positively affronted at Petra's words. "No. I would _never_—"

"There is nothing that will prevent this, if he stays, Guardian," Petra says. Her voice is cool and collected even if her face looks anything but. "Cayde has to go back."

"But—"

"Kid," Cayde sighs and wraps his hand around Meera, tugs her closer. "PV's right. Neither of us might like it, but somewhere across time and space there's a version of you who's probably worried sick about me and Sundance."

"But I just got you back," she whispers and oh, but she looks so lost right now. "I just got you back, and you can't even stay?"

"I'm sorry," he murmurs and draws her into his arms. She goes willingly and hides away. Petra politely averts her eye when Cayde gives her a look over the Guardian's head and he returns his attention to her. "I'm so sorry."

"It's not fair," she spits out and clenches at the front of his armor, trying to gain a hold on the stiff leather. "_It's not fair_!"

It never is, but he holds her close anyway.

"How do we do this?"

Petra's face twists, turns uncomfortable as if she knows the answer but is loath to give it. One hand tightens around her sidearm, the other clenches the empty air.

Cayde blames it on her Reef-born sensibilities.

"There is… a place," Petra begins, reluctance only growing. "The Watchtower that looms in the distance. It is built by the Awoken, and the borders between realities is… I believe the best word to describe it would be 'thin'."

"And you just _happened_ to have that stashes away out here?"

Oh, he can almost taste the sarcasm that's spewing out of his mouth hole right now.

"Everything happens for a reason, Cayde," Petra's answer is blithe. "I hoped that we would never have to get closer, but seeing as the circumstances are what they are, it is our best hope of fixing this mess."

He just nods, his hold on Meera tightening.

This is the right decision, he knows that it is, but simply knowing this doesn't make it any easier.

Knowing it doesn't make it hurt less.

oOo

She's curled up on the bunk, blanket bunched up around her shoulders and a small nightlight illuminating the spartan room.

"You keep the light on?" he asks. It's such a small thing from back when he got her out of that shitty situation on Io—something that their realities share, her so close to being captured by the Red Legion proper—but he can't help but breathe easier because this means that while she's changed, she hasn't changed _that_ much and normality is something he can work with.

It's something he _knows_.

"Never stopped," she whispers and twists around to look up at him from the bed. "Dark things have taken too much from me, Cayde. I won't let it take anything else."

_She's talking about her sanity_

Her eyes are beginning to look a little drowsy, but the wariness that's occupied them the whole day has yet to leave entirely, even he can see that. Even when she's supposed to be somewhere safe, she can't relax, and it's all his fault. His cocky bullshit got her into this fucking mess.

He walks over without another word and sits on the edge of her bunk. She's moving up to make space for him and wraps her arms around his neck to lean on him from behind. One hand moves up to rest against where hers are while the other is busy unbuckling the belt 'round his waist and unfastening the clasp of his cloak. His armor is still between the two of them, but that too is unbuckled as fast as he can manage and then—_finally_—it's just the two of them.

She moves her hands to lift away the covers and he slips in beside her without a word. This time his arms are the ones wrapping around her, and he pulls her close without even thinking about it.

This… this is safe, something he knows and something he needs.

It's cruel.

He can't stay here, can't stay with her unless being slowly erased by the fabric of time and space suddenly sounds appealing, and both of them knows it.

"We shouldn't…" she's muttering while stroking one of the plates along his lower arm. To him it sounds broken and wonderful and desperate.

He feels just the same.

"I know. I'm sorry," he says and presses his face into her hair. "I'm so sorry."

"'s okay."

She's crying now and all he wants to is do the same but Exo don't have tear ducts and so he's gonna have to do with shuddering beside her. Her tears are making the metal on him slippery and the salt is probably going to leave all kinds of weird residue if he's going to let it stay on, but Cayde couldn't be bothered less right now.

"It's _not_," he says and shakes his head. "It's not okay—'s fucked up, is what it is."

"I don't want you to go, Cayde."

"I don't want to either."

"But you're going to, anyway. I know you're going to leave."

"I have to." Cayde just looks at her, feeling just as broken and jarred as she no doubt feels right now. "I don't want to, but I have to."

She's reaching for him and he's reaching for her and before he knows it, they're tangled up in a mixture of metal and flesh and _want_. It's intoxicating and he wants _more_.

He's mapping out her body with his fingers, tracing over new bumps and bruises that her Ghost hasn't magicked away with the Light. It's slow, controlled, but it doesn't take long for her to get impatient with him. Her oh-so-much-smaller hands are forcing him back as she shifts around, straddles him as she begins familiarizing herself again with his body. He knows that she knows it like the back of her own hand at this point, knows where to press to make him moan and what makes him just about drunk on the physical sensation and stimulus that she can give him, but this is something that she _needs_.

She needs more than anything to affirm that yes, _he's here_ and it's not a dream and just for now the two of them can do anything they fucking want.

Tomorrow's when it's gonna go down, when they're going to try and get him back to his own timeline and hopefully fix all of this shit before it's too late, but it hurts. It hurts that he'll have to leave his wonderous, amazing, broken Guardian here to hatred and revenge and murder.

Because that's what it is. They can wrap in a thousand different coats of nice packaging, but murder is still murder at the end of the day.

She'll be broken by the end of this quest she has hurled herself on, and if he had the power to stay and guide her away from it then he would, but he can't.

He focuses back on her.

Her cheeks are still wet from the tears she's shedding when he focuses back on her. He's reaching up to wipe them away before he even registers the motion. Cayde cracks a smile up at her when the action coaxes out a hiccupping laugh from her and leans up to press his mouth plates against her lips.

It's something familiar, something that can ground the two of them in whatever the Hell this is that they're doing.

His body's not human anymore but it sure as Hell still has the instincts and functions, only difference being where flesh has been exchanged with hard plates and silicone to fit with the whole doom-robot-war-machine aesthetic.

She's gasping when he's sinking into her and Cayde feels her holding on for dear life. He's scared for a moment, afraid that he's done something wrong, that he's hurt her, but then her lips are pressing against his and she's flexing with her pelvic muscles.

"Showoff," he rasps out against her lips and nips at them. She snickers and rubs at her cheeks with the back of her hand to get away the last stains of tears. It leaves them flushed and matching the rest of her body quite nicely. At least Cayde thinks so.

"You love it, though."

"Yeah, I do."

She flexes with her muscles again and gyrates her hips against his. The sensations are hitting him from top to toe, from where her hands are caressing his plates to how her skin feels against silicone and metal.

This… this, he can fool himself into thinking is love, is healthy and everything that they could wish for.

He's lying.

He's lying to himself, to her, to reality.

But the pain feels good for once and so he can't make himself stop.

oOo

When she comes but he doesn't, he soldiers on, grasps her tighter, moves faster, forces her through one continuing wave of pleasure after the other, even when all she can do is twitch against his body, wailing that she cannot take much more.

He doesn't believe her.

And he can't let her go.

It takes a long while before he reaches his own climax. In the end she just lies in the bed, pliant and boneless just like Cayde feels himself.

He still hasn't let her go.

oOo

She's asleep.

He's still awake, though.

The room they're sharing is covered in darkness. The only nearby light source is the glow that his eyes are emitting.

It smells like sex in here.

Sex and oil.

It's _intoxicating_.

The scent of it is thick in the air, thick enough that he can smell it in her hair, on the sheets, in the bedcovers. He'll have to shower in the morning, or whatever it is that they do out here in the ass-end of the Shore. It's one thing to show up looking like Hell in front of Zavala and Ikora, but it's a whole other thing entirely to show up looking like Hell _and_ smelling like you'd just stumbled out of a brothel.

She's murmuring in her sleep, turning in his arms and he tightens the grip he has around her.

He shouldn't have done this, shouldn't have slept with her.

It's cruel, giving her a taste of what they could have together, only to take it away right afterwards.

Cayde looks down at her, strokes metal fingers across her cheek, smooths over a wrinkle between her brows.

"What you did was cruel."

He looks up, sees her Ghost hover in the air above them. Its blue eye looks straight at him, judges him in silence.

"I know."

"Why did you do it? Why hurt her like this?"

It sounds… bitter, _angry_.

"I don't know. She needed it, and I wasn't strong enough to say no to her."

"I don't know why we're doing this anymore, Cayde," her Ghost suddenly says, "I thought at first that this was about revenge, about doing what was right and making sure that your killers got what they deserved, but after all this… what's she's done in the name of justice… it's killing her."

"You've seen it too?"

"I've felt it. Her Light, it's…"

"It's fading."

Admitting it out loud hurts more than he'd like to admit. Pfah, he really shouldn't be so surprised at this point.

"This happened because you died, Cayde," the Ghost says and floats closer, collides with the tip of his horn. "When you get back to your own timeline… don't let this happen to my Guardian. Don't kill her Light because you feel like you have something to prove."

"Jeez, that's a mite harsh there, buddy."

"She's my Guardian. I love her with all my being."

"I know," Cayde whispers and keeps on stroking her hair. "I know you do."

He can't say the words himself.

He's still a fucking coward.

* * *

_"Was I like this?"_

_"Like what?"_

_"Like the Guardian is now… was I like this when Andal died, 'Dance?"_

_"I—"_

_"I don't remember much from back then. Didn't want to, I suppose. But… how was I?"_

_"You were… troubled, Cayde. Understandable, given that you—that we had just lost a friend, a mentor."_

_"That wasn't my question."_

_"It's complicated, Cayde."_

_"Then uncomplicate it."_

_"Easier said than done."_

_"Never stopped you before."_

_"What brought this on, Cayde? You've never asked for this before, never wanted to."_

_"I've seen what will happen if I die, Sundance. Seen what my death will cause. I'm scared."_

_"You're the Hunter Vanguard. What do you have to be scared of?"_

_"Hah!"_

_"Cayde?"_

_"You really think that it is that easy?"_

_"I never said tha—"_

_"'Cause it ain't, Sundance! It ain't no easy dance on roses, and you _know _that. So, answer the fucking question and just _tell me_!"_

* * *

The Watchtower stands silent.

The way to it was anything but, full of the odd Cabal or Psion, Fallen ready for the kill, Scorned screeching at them even when there's several hundred meters between them. Full with stinging winds, the thick scent of gunpowder and blood and hatred.

So much hatred.

This was never what he wanted, he never wanted it to be a choice between him and the unimaginable, but here they are, gathered to send him back to where he came from as if he's some stray dog they finally have to give back to the proper owners.

Meera still hasn't stopped crying.

She refused the helm before she left Spider's lair with Cayde and Petra, refused to don anything that would conceal her frayed emotions.

It's caused just about four separate occasions where his body has made a valiant effort of recreating a right proper heart attack, but she refuses it every time he tries to hand her the same helm.

Still holding on to that shattered auto rifle and garbed in her roughened, singed armor, her only proper weapons being her Hunter's knife, a few grenades and the hand cannon she had used when he first found her, Meera looks like a sick, distorted version of an avenging angel.

He stops trying to force her after she nails an Abomination between the eyes with her knife, and finishes off the stragglers around it with three rounds from her iron.

Petra says nothing the entire time.

* * *

_"I don't know if you're ever goin' to find this recording, kid. Traveler above, I feel stupider than a dreg drunk off Ether just thinkin' 'bout you being left here. I don't want to leave you behind, you need to know that._

_A heavy breath interrupts Cayde._

_"But… I can't—couldn't—stay there with you. I asked your Ghost to record this because of what happened, so that you'd still have somethin' to remind yourself of that magnificent hunk of metal you've called Hunter Vanguard. I've said some things that I shouldn't have said, and I've done some things that I _really _shouldn't have done, and I can only hope that you'll forgive me for those. That's my last wish of you, Meera. _Forgive_. Let go and forgive the shit that happened—I know that you'll stop at nothing to see Uldren's head on a pike and I don't blame you for that one bit. But, kid, promise that you won't let that shit consume you afterwards. Please. For me. Let go after this. _Please_, Meera."_

_A brief pause._

_"Cut the recording, Ghost. I think that's enough for now."_

* * *

"Cayde," Sundance's voice reaches him above the chaos of blazing bullets. "We're almost there."

Meera's cheeks are still stained with tear-tracks.

Over the years there has been many a time where Cayde has needed to pick up his slack and simply get to work on fixing whatever shitfest the Earth or the Guardians or even sometimes the Vanguard have found themselves stuck in.

Trying—succeeding—to get a foothold on Oryx's Dreadnought was one.

Gettin' that Vex teleporter on Nessus was another.

Following the disaster that was finding the Mindbender and his Guardian ending that sorry bastard's life with what could only be described as 'extreme prejudice', Cayde is just about ready to blow something up, _and soon_.

If he thought that Guardians could be fickle little bastards to deal with before he got chugged across a dimension or two, then that is _nothing_ compared to the shit that he is currently dealing with.

She is utterly adamant in her decision to keep him from contacting the Vanguard, insists that if he does this all it will result in is Guardians flooding the whole Reef, Uldren and his last remaining Barons escaping, and her vengeance, her precious, fucking _vengeance_ getting thwarted because of all this.

She cannot allow it.

It irks him, annoys him immensely that all he can do is agree with her, because for all that he wishes it isn't so, Meera is right.

Guardians flooding the Reef will only end in tragedy, even though the most danger they would face out here would be the strange mix of Scorned, Fallen and Cabal that are acting out the most disgusting twist of a civil war he's ever laid eyes upon. For once, Guardian intervention is the one thing that is most certainly _not_ needed, and Cayde suddenly has to adjust his worldview to one where he now has to accept that for once, a smokin' gun ain't no great answer to this shit he's found himself neck-deep in.

_Fuck_

Petra agreed, but of course she only did that because the one thing she'd hate more than anything else would be Guardians intervening with Reef affairs even more than maybe Uldren did back when his bulb hadn't exploded yet and he still had a Queen to fight zealously for.

Cayde follows Petra—trusts that she won't lead hi astray, not in this.

But, then, why does this feel like he's being led towards the slaughterhouse?

* * *

_"She is stronger than what you're accusing her of. She won't fall to the Darkness."_

_"You saw her out there, felt her too. When I'm not here anyone, what then? Who's going to keep her from goin' off her rocker, eh?"_

_"The Vanguard can—"_

_"The Vanguard has failed here, 'Dance. There ain't no pretty way to pack that shit away."_

_"Cayde, you can't just—"_

_"I know I can't stay—Petra's made that pretty fuckin' clear. I jus—I wish there was somethin' I could do."_

_"Cayde…"_

* * *

They stop outside the gates leading into the room where it'll happen.

Petra throws him out when he tries to enter with her, saying something about her making sure that everything is set up properly without him there to distract her.

Cayde finds Meera sitting by herself, Ghost nowhere in sight.

So, of course, he joins her.

"Did I ever tell you about that one time I found out about Zavala funding Vanguard-themed merch?" He sits down beside the Guardian and wraps an arm around her shoulder without paying attention to how she stiffens up immediately. He's a man—okay, _robot_—on a mission and he ain't got no time for moody Guardians having existential crises. "Well, he did. Called them 'Zavala Action Snacks' or somethin' spiffy like that—can you believe that he locked every single article or file about that down with a two-thirds Vanguard authorization, too?"

Meera's silent. She's looking out over the gaping reaches below the floating rock they're resting on.

"Of course, I got Ikora roped into helping out gettin' through those authorization seals. Man, was Zavala _pissed_ with a capital P when he found out."

Not a single word comes from her.

C'mon, Cayde, you're better than this.

Would the Vanguard know what to do? The Guardian had said that all they had done was give speeches, but she's not exactly nonbiased in this whole shitfest, and they might have done something that she has simply overlooked or not even deemed necessary to her revenge quest.

"Meera."

He changes his approach, goes for the serious tone he knows that she's not expecting. Does as Zavala and Ikora would do, that usually gets results, right?

It works like a charm. She's looking at him out of the corner of her eye now, shock or suspicion being the only emotion on her face.

"Cayde."

"You're going to be alright."

A sharp huff of—bitter, angry—laughter leaves her.

"You sound so sure."

"I _am_ sure," he says. "Because I know."

"How so?"

"I was like this, once. Back when An—back when Andal Brask died."

"The former Hunter Vanguard."

Cayde nods.

"He was a damn good friend of mine. Craziest motherfucker this side of the Solar System."

"More crazy than Tora?"

Now it's Cayde's turn to laugh.

"I don't think _anyone_ can be crazier than your Tora. I'm still not convinced he ain't on a perpetual high from some weird magical drug that the Awoken have concocted out here in the Reef."

It's faint but it's there, a teeny, tiny smile sitting there in the corner of her mouth.

Cayde's mirth evaporates when Andal returns to the front of his mind.

"I loved that bastard with everything I had, kid," he begins, rotates his shoulders even though he doesn't really need to. "And when I heard that he was dead—that he'd been killed by Taniks. Oh, I _snapped_."

"Like me."

It's a statement, not a question.

Cayde doesn't have a real, proper answer for her on that one.

"Yeah," he nods, arm still around her shoulder. "Just like you."

He keeps holding on when she flinches, tries to get away from him.

"Cayde, let—"

"You have to promise me somethin', kid," he rasps out. "Promise me that you won't drown."

"Drown?"

"Don't you fucking dare drown in despair after this, a'right? You still have a purpose. You still have a thousand things to do before it's time for you to go gentle into that good night."

Meera looks down at her hands. She's confused, he can tell from how she's fidgeting with her gloves.

"How can you sound so sure?"

Cayde thinks she sounds thin and broken—stretched too far over too much space and now the stress is finally starting to show.

He can't think of another time where she has been as beautiful as she is now—soot, sweat, blood and all.

"I'm your damn Vanguard, Guardian. It's my _job_ to know this shit, whether I like it or not."

Petra's voice calls them inside.

He swallows. Unwraps his hand from her shoulders and grasps at her fingers instead.

The kiss he presses against them is desperate, but neither say a word.

* * *

_"When I get back to you, the you that's still in my timeline, I'm not gonna leave your side ever again. You have my word as a Hunter and as your beau, too, I guess."_

_Cayde grins at the recording lens._

_"Cayde, be serious."_

_"Cool your circuits, little guy, I'm gettin' there."_

_"You're not very convincing."_

_"You ain't ever seen my convincing face."_

_"And I don't want to."_

_Cayde waves at the lens. "Ignore your Little Light, Guardian, he can be a right sassy prick when he wants to be, y'know that? Now, back to the important stuff 'bout me—I ain't _never _gonna leave you again. You got my word on that. If I can, I'll make every day count and there won't be a force in this world or the next that'll tear me away. I won't let it, and I know that you won't either._

_"Jus—sweetheart, you gotta promise me that you'll let go of this shit. Hate ain't good for you or your soul, and if you're lost to the Darkness because of this, because of me? I don't know if I could survive with that thought. So, as a promise 'tween Guardians—between Hunters—just… let go. Let go and _live_."_

* * *

It's just like falling asleep.

He feels her in his arms, feels her press her lips against his mouth-plates, whispers a broken "See you later" and then… then he sleeps.

Nothing hurts. There's no bright lights or tunnels or his entire life passing in front of his very eyes.

Petra's chanting drowns out the roar around him.

Just…

It's just like falling asleep.

oOo

His sensors are going wild when he comes to. Sensory overload like you wouldn't believe.

The first thing Cayde sees when he wakes up again is Ikora and the Guardian looking at him. They might just very well be the best fucking thing he's seen in what feels like weeks. Especially his Guardian.

Human.

Sweet Traveler, she looks so _human_ and _pure_ that it nearly breaks his heart. Even her Light makes him dizzy with how it feels—untainted, whole, her, _amazing_!

They're in the medbay, everything reeks of sterile chemicals, bleached linens and dread. Medbays are only used when there's something that a Ghost can't heal, when its Light ain't good enough to fix what's been broken.

Cayde's only been here once.

"Hey."

His head turns automatically as soon as his audio sensors register her voice.

"Hey there, yourself."

Speaker's anklesocks, _that's_ his voice? Sounds like a lawnmower chewed out his vocal units and beat the scrappy remains up with an angle grinder.

She looks worried, unkept even with hair sticking out everywhere from her usually oh-so-neatly-done braid and there's bags under her eyes.

Even her lips look chapped and irritated—musta been bitin' them to pieces.

The first real thing he does is take in a shuddering (unnecessary) breath and blindly reach for his Guardian, sitting up fast enough for the world to spin as he yanks her towards him and locks her in a tight embrace.

"C-Cayde?" she squeaks, voice adorably flustered and her arms sticking out on either side as she probably isn't too sure where she can place them without breaking decorum.

"Sorry, just got a little… I-I don't know what just…" he cringes inwardly at how breathless he sounds as he looks down at his little Guardian. "Sorry just… just needed a hug."

Ikora's looking at him. That look that says 'you're hiding something and I want to know what it is but the kids are present so I'll chew you out later' and Cayde is just praying to the Traveler, the Speaker, to anyone who might be listening in on him, that she won't.

He can't take it. Not after what he just saw—experienced.

His Guardian is hesitant as all Hell about it but she's hugging him back after a few tense seconds, thankfully unable to see the face that Ikora's making at the two of them, and Cayde feels warm all the way down to his metal tippy toes.

It feels wrong.

She makes a gesture for him to meet with her later before she saunters off. Cayde makes the Exo equivalent of sticking out his tongue like a five-year-old.

"I got scared there for a minute," she rambles and he freezes involuntarily at her words. He's seen her scared and it's a sight he'll never want to see again for as long as he still draws (unnecessary) breath on this good Earth. "Thought that you were gone for good this time."

"Me, gone?" he croaks out and laughs. It sounds nervous and fake and he hates it. "Never. You'll never get rid of me. Not in a million years, sweetheart."

When she draws back to look him in the eyes and smiles, he's just about ready to start crying.

She's here. She's safe. She's whole.

And somewhere out there—the fact that it's in another reality doesn't matter—he fucked her over, all because he wanted to show off, to impress his girl.

No.

Never.

Never in a million fucking years.

He feels her Light swell up around them, a Light that ain't tainted with Darkness, that doesn't feel oily or like its about two seconds away from ripping into everything around it like a vicious beast.

"I won't ever leave you," he says, dead serious and ignores how she's now blinking in surprise because of the sudden tone shift. "And if I ever disappear, know that I'll always come back. I _promise_, Meera."

Because he will. Always.

He'll fight through time if he has to.

oOo

Alright, so Cayde's seen some shit over the years, been in plenty'o tight spots and amassed more debts than most people could ever dream of, but every single time he's always bounced back in some shape or form.

It ain't the fact that he was hurled ass over teakettle through time and space that gets to him, it ain't the constant prodding and poking from Zavala and Ikora regarding his whereabouts that has him tight and snappy at just about everyone.

It's for how long he was gone.

He's been gone three weeks.

Three weeks for his proper Guardian to fret and be scared that it was something she'd done that had made him disappear in a burst of sparks and shrieks if the CCTV-footage is anything to go by.

For him it's barely been 48 hours at _most_.

They don't understand him whenever he withdraws from the hangar or the new Hall of Guardians and ends up somewhere on the rafters, hydrazine booze in hand and a morose mood darkening everything around him. They don't understand why he tenses every single time that the Reef is brought up in conversation and has to leave for 'some urgent shit'.

Even his baby Hunters are starting to think that something's amiss.

Even Meera of all people is starting to believe that he's not alright, even after all the times he's repeated those words to her.

"Do you need to talk?"

"Cayde, is there something I can help you with?"

"If you want to just sit somewhere, we can do that, Cayde. I'm here for you."

'Here for you'

Pfah, such pretty, insignificant words and yet he's _this_ close to choking on something hard in his throat every time he hears them come out of her mouth.

She's too good for him, for this fucked up world they're living in.

They don't understand because he can't tell them. No one would get it.

Everything is back in order—he's back where he belongs with a Guardian who loves him unconditionally and only seeks to help while somewhere out there, there's a version of her who's lost him to cocky bullshit and a searing bullet shot by a megalomaniac Awoken shit stain of a prince.

He didn't cave when Ikora and Zavala put him through the wringer, when they tried to get out of him where he'd been, what he'd seen.

All Cayde said was that it wasn't worth talking about, jealously guarding the future he'd seen, desperately wishing that if he just kept it wrapped up nicely and stowed away under the stairs then it won't happen, he won't die.

But he gets a call.

Petra.

She speaks of the Reef. She speaks of villainous Fallen scum. She speaks of the Prison of Elders. She speaks of wanting him there by her side, get him out of the damn Tower and breathe in some questionable air.

It's the hardest thing that Cayde's had to do in a long, _long_ time, but he refuses. Sends a seasoned Fireteam instead. Makes sure that Meera's off somewhere else when he announces his decision so she won't be tempted.

He knows that she would be.

Petra's disappointment in him is almost tangible. Cayde doesn't blame her, can't really.

No one says a word when he slips away from the Tower, no one notices when a sparrow suddenly goes missing until it's far too late for anyone to catch up with him.

He gets _outrageously_ drunk that night, out in the middle of fucking no-where with the stars above him, the sea below him and an endless field of withered grass all around.

Sundance is there, so that's nice. Just nestled on his shoulder as they watch the sun set, the stars dance above them and the beaten carcass of Luna float somewhere in space oh-so-far from where the two of them are. Being out there, cut off from everything, makes him feel… peace. For the first time since he's come back to his proper time Cayde feels at peace. There's no one to pester him with questions that they barely understand, or shoot him curious glances like he's some sort of zoo animal.

It's in times like these that he misses Creepy—misses Eris more than he'd care to admit.

At least she's never sugarcoated anything for him.

"Christ almighty," he grunts and takes a swig of the bottle, wheezes when it burns all the way down. "I'm _pathetic_."

"You're human, Cayde."

"Am I? Am I really?"

"Your body might not be, but your feelings are."

"Some times I ain't that sure, 'Dance," he grumbles. "Would a human have left her like that?"

Neither of them has to say who he means. They both know.

Cayde takes another drink.

* * *

_"Once, Andal and I talked about the Warminds. He said some stupid shit 'bout me being Rasputin—honestly, he said a whole lot of shitty things. Dick jokes, too, although Ikora vehemently denies it. Ah, he was one of the good ones. A Guardian you could really aspire to be like. Not like Malphur, that's just a can of worms that you sure as fuck ain't ever gonna mess with if I have anythin' to say 'bout it._

_"But back to Andal and me… I loved him, I really did—not like with you, Traveler, no, that's just… _eurgh_!—so when I lost him, I snapped. I've probably told you about this by the time you hear this, and if all goes… well, I don't really want to say 'well' but there's not really another word that I can use so… yeah, if all goes well, then I'll be back by your side. The you that I know and not—y-you know what, let's just move on—Ghost, cut the recording, just cut—!"_

* * *

He wakes to birds chirping above him and the smell of burning firewood.

Also to a headache that feels more like he's been thrown into a mountain by an Officer Cabal instead of being the aftermath of a hydrazine-laced alcohol binge.

But it's the firewood that really confuses him.

"Thought you'd never wake."

Her.

Meera.

She's here.

What the actual fuck?

"How'd you find me?"

He's probably looking like shit, and he feels like it too. Sundance is snickering at him in her own little pocket of time and space and for a second there he really, really hates her.

_No, you don't._

"Fuck off."

"Excuse me?"

"Not for you," he waves off Meera's affronted look from where she's sitting by the small fire, a sandwich in one hand and a mug of something steamy in the other. "Sundance."

Her face softens.

Neither of them say anything as they watch the sun rise in the east. It paints the city in the valley below them in a million different reds and oranges and yellows.

It's beautiful.

It's _life_.

Her hand wraps around his, sandwich abandoned on a plastic plate.

"Cayde," she sighs. "I don't know what happened to you while you were gone, and I'm not going to press. You'll tell me if you want to, when you want to. All I ask… don't leave me behind again. Please. I don't think I could take it if you did."

It feels like his throat tightens when she says that.

He's not okay, won't be for a while, but… maybe she can help.

She's not like the… the _other_ her who was fire and blood and destruction, who would rather shoot first before asking questions and revel in leaving a trail of blood in her wake.

Maybe she can help—perhaps not right now, but maybe later? Later, when everything still isn't painted grim and dark and fatalistic.

Yeah.

Because he made her a promise, didn't he?

He wasn't ever going to leave her, even if it meant fighting against time.


End file.
